Al-Qaeda: What Is It, Where Is It? (Part II)

George Orwell, who wrote the famous novel ‘1984’, labelled one’s ability to hold diametrically opposed views in one’s mind as ‘doublethink’, and saying something which actually means something else as ‘doublespeak’.

In Part-I of my blog with the same title, we looked at what the term Al-Qaeda (which I spell as Al-CIAda) meant. This time we will dissect the following bit of news to see what it REALLY means. I will decode it all for you and call the truth ‘singlespeak’.

Barack Hussain Obama’s special representative for Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, said, “Al Qaeda aims to infiltrate Central Asia to train terrorists and turn the ex-Soviet region into a zone of unrest, US President.”

SINGLESPEAK: Rich Broker says that Al-CIAda is now gunning for Central Asia to train terrorists and turn the ex-Soviet region into a zone of unrest.

Rich Broker is currently on a visit to Central Asian countries Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan and Kazakhstan, which began on February 17.

SINGLESPEAK: The official trips are delivery meetings for secret messages or outright threats. Rich Broker is visiting five countries to get them to buy American weapons and then die fighting and destroying themselves so that the region’s resources may be secured for American use (‘safeguarding American interests’).

“I think the real threat in this region is less from the Taliban but more from al Qaeda, which trains international terrorists,” he said on a visit to Tajikistan.

SINGLESPEAK: Rich Broker is admitting (it is called rhetoric) that Al-CIAda, after creating and using the ‘Afghan ‘Mujahideen’ and then morphing them into the dreaded ‘Taliban’, have now re-named them evil ‘Al-Qaeda’ to spread the fictitious ‘global war on terror’ (GWOT, which I call G-WOE: global war of error).

Rich Broker said Tajikistan was important for “ethnic, geographic and strategic reasons” as it shares a 1,340 kilometres border with Afghanistan.

SINGLESPEAK: Tajikistan is important for ethnic cleansing, geographic destruction and strategic chaos because it shares a 1,340 kilometres border with Afghanistan and is ideal as a sitting duck.

“This is an issue of common concern for the US and all the countries of this region including Pakistan, China and India,” said Rich Broker.

SINGLESPEAK: This is an issue of American interests (‘securing’ the natural resources for its own use) alone and all the countries of this region including Pakistan, China and India do not matter much.

Stability in the vast resource-rich region sprawling between China, Russia and Afghanistan is crucial to the West as it lies on a new supply route for NATO-led operations in Afghanistan.

SINGLESPEAK: Instability in the vast resource-rich region sprawling between China, Russia and Afghanistan is good for the American economy, which thrives on wars. The West salivates because this region lies on a new oil and gas supply route; we need to spread more instability so that NATO-led operations in Afghanistan succeed.

The West is worried about risks to stability in the vast Muslim region, dominated by authoritarian but secular governments. Analysts believe terrorism could spread into the heart of Central Asia from nearby Afghanistan.

SINGLESPEAK: The West is worried that if the vast Muslim region wakes up to become stable, the authoritarian puppet regimes (that we have established and disguised as secular governments or benevolent dictatorships) will become unstable. To boost our arms sales, our spies want terrorism to spread into the heart of Central Asia from nearby Afghanistan.

The region’s main militant group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), wants to topple the secular government and establish strict Islamic rule.

SINGLESPEAK: The region’s main militant group, the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), wants to topple the secular government to establish strict Islamic rule which is a threat to the American way of life—whatever that way really is.

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan fighters were forced out of the region after the end of a 1990’s civil war in Tajikistan into Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas, where the movement’s leadership is believed to have established close contacts with al Qaeda, security analysts say.

SINGLESPEAK: Our spymasters say that since we helped Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan’s fighters out of the region after the end of 1990’s civil war in Tajikistan, we also made sure they went straight to Pakistan’s lawless tribal areas. There the movement’s leadership has been strengthened as Al-CIAda.

Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan fighters are now believed to be returning to the Central Asian region to seed unrest in a region weakened by prolonged economic crises and people’s frustration at growing poverty.

SINGLESPEAK: We are happy to note that Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan’s fighters are now returning to the Central Asian region to promote unrest in a region we have already weakened by economic crises to prolong people’s frustration at growing poverty.

In Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov told Richard Rich Broker that he was eager to work closer with the US over Afghanistan.

SINGLESPEAK: In Uzbekistan, President Islam Karimov has told us that he has no choice but to work with the US over Afghanistan since the Americans are going to ‘bomb them back into stone age’.

“The president expressed Uzbekistan’s firm determination to further develop US-Uzbek relations in a constructive way in light of efforts to bring lasting peace and stability to Afghanistan,” Uzbekistan ‘s official UzA news agency said.

SINGLESPEAK: The president expressed Uzbekistan’s helplessness in the matter; he will now waste time in further developing US-Uzbek relations in a way that suits American cowboy tactics to bring lasting war and instability to Afghanistan.

It also quoted Rich Broker as telling President Islam Karimov that he too wanted to “strengthen cooperation with Uzbekistan over security”. Uzbekistan now serves a vital supply route for NATO operations in Afghanistan and Western nations rarely voice strong criticism of Uzbekistan’s poor human rights or democratic record.

SINGLESPEAK: I told President Islam Karimov that I too wanted to strengthen cooperation with Uzbekistan over insecurity. Since Uzbekistan now serves a vital supply route for NATO destructiveness in Afghanistan, Western nations will turn a blind eye to Uzbekistan’s poor human rights or democratic record.

Contacts between Uzbekistan and the US were virtually frozen for years after 2005, when Washington condemned the Central Asian nation for firing on protesters in the town of Andizhan. Witnesses said hundreds of people died in that event.

SINGLESPEAK: Contacts between Uzbekistan and the US were frozen for years after 2005, when Washington applauded the Central Asian nation for firing on protesters in the town of Andizhan. Deaths of hundreds of people in that event made us happy.

The improvement in ties has led analysts to suggest that Washington may seek to reopen its air base in Uzbekistan, which was used for operations in Afghanistan but was closed by President Islam Karimov in retaliation for the American criticism of the Andizhan events.

SINGLESPEAK: Our spymasters now think the time is right for Washington to reopen its air base in Uzbekistan, which was used for operations in Afghanistan.

“Ambassador Richard Rich Broker met with President Islam Karimov to discuss a range of issues of mutual interest, including the international efforts in Afghanistan,” it said in a brief statement.

SINGLESPEAK: Rich Broker met with President Islam Karimov to discuss non-issues of American interest, including the international warmongering in Afghanistan.

Al-Qaeda: What Is It, Where Is It? (Part-I)

We need to learn what the news we watch or listen to each day actually mean. Take for example today’s headline: US warns of increased al Qaeda threat in Central Asia.

Please sympathize with the Green Cardigans (those who kicked this country in the face and emigrated to the US for learning cleverer nursery rhymes and earning more Dollars) and who will either never believe this or just stay quiet because they have given their oaths of allegiance to the American flag. So put that silly popcorn and Coke away and try to understand what Al-Qaeda means; we will start with a document called ‘Al Qaeda– The Database’ (Wayne Madsen Report’ of November 18, 2005) http://www.thetruthseeker.co.uk/article.asp?ID=3836.

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Al Qaeda– The Database:

“Shortly before his untimely death, former British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook told the House of Commons that "Al Qaeda" is not really a terrorist group but a database of international Mujaheddin and arms smugglers used by the CIA and Saudis to funnel guerrillas, arms, and money into Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. Courtesy of World Affairs, a journal based in New Delhi, WMR can bring you an important excerpt from an Apr.-Jun. 2004 article by Pierre-Henry Bunel, a former agent for French military intelligence.

"I first heard about Al-Qaida while I was attending the Command and Staff course in Jordan. I was a French officer at that time and the French Armed Forces had close contacts and cooperation with Jordan.

"Two of my Jordanian colleagues were experts in computers. They were air defence officers. Using computer science slang, they introduced a series of jokes about students' punishment.

"For example, when one of us was late at the bus stop to leave the Staff College, the two officers used to tell us: 'You'll be noted in 'Q eidat il-Maaloomaat' which meant 'You'll be logged in the information database.' Meaning 'You will receive a warning . . .' If the case was more severe, they would used to talk about 'Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.' Meaning: 'the decision database.' It meant 'you will be punished.' For the worst cases, they used to speak of logging in 'Al Qaida.'

"In the early 1980s the Islamic Bank for Development, which is located in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, like the Permanent Secretariat of the Islamic Conference Organization, bought a new computerized system to cope with its accounting and communication requirements. At the time, the system was more sophisticated than necessary for their actual needs.

"It was decided to use a part of the system's memory to host the Islamic Conference's database. It was possible for the countries attending to access the database by telephone: an Intranet, in modern language. The governments of the member-countries as well as some of their embassies in the world were connected to that network.

"[According to a Pakistani major] the database was divided into two parts, the information file where the participants in the meetings could pick up and send information they needed, and the decision file where the decisions made during the previous sessions were recorded and stored.

In Arabic, the files were called, 'Qeidat il-Maaloomaat' and 'Q eidat i-Taaleemaat.' Those two files were kept in one file called in Arabic 'Q eidat ilmu'ti'aat' which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word Al Qaida which is the Arabic word for "base." The military air base of Riyadh, Saudi Arabia is called 'q eidat 'riyadh al 'askariya.' Q eida means "a base" and "Al Qaida" means "the base."

"In the mid-1980s, Al Qaida was a database located in computer and dedicated to the communications of the Islamic Conference's secretariat.

"In the early 1990s, I was a military intelligence officer in the Headquarters of the French Rapid Action Force. Because of my skills in Arabic, my job was also to translate a lot of faxes and letters seized or intercepted by our intelligence services . . . We often got intercepted material sent by Islamic networks operating from the UK or from Belgium.

"These documents contained directions sent to Islamic armed groups in Algeria or in France. The messages quoted the sources of statements to be exploited in the redaction of the tracts or leaflets, or to be introduced in video or tapes to be sent to the media. The most commonly quoted sources were the United Nations, the non-aligned countries, the UNHCR and . . . Al Qaida.

"Al Qaida remained the data base of the Islamic Conference. Not all member countries of the Islamic Conference are 'rogue states' and many Islamic groups could pick up information from the databases. It was but natural for Osama Bin Laden to be connected to this network. He is a member of an important family in the banking and business world.

"Because of the presence of 'rogue states,' it became easy for terrorist groups to use the email of the database. Hence, the email of Al Qaida was used, with some interface system, providing secrecy, for the families of the Mujaheddin to keep links with their children undergoing training in Afghanistan, or in Libya or in the Beqaa valley, Lebanon. Or in action anywhere in the battlefields where the extremists sponsored by all the 'rogue states' used to fight. And the 'rogue states' included Saudi Arabia. When Osama bin Laden was an American agent in Afghanistan, the Al Qaida Intranet was a good communication system through coded or covert messages.

Al Qaida was neither a terrorist group nor Osama bin Laden's personal property . . . The terrorist actions in Turkey in 2003 were carried out by Turks and the motives were local and not international, unified, or joint. These crimes put the Turkish government in a difficult position vis-a-vis the British and the Israelis. But the attacks certainly intended to 'punish' Prime Minister Erdogan for being a 'toot tepid' Islamic politician.

" . . . In the Third World the general opinion is that the countries using weapons of mass destruction for economic purposes in the service of imperialism are in fact 'rogue states," specially the US and other NATO countries.

"Some Islamic economic lobbies are conducting a war against the 'liberal" economic lobbies. They use local terrorist groups claiming to act on behalf of Al Qaida. On the other hand, national armies invade independent countries under the aegis of the UN Security Council and carry out pre-emptive wars. And the real sponsors of these wars are not governments but the lobbies concealed behind them.

"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money."

In yet another example of what happens to those who challenge the system, in December 2001, Maj. Pierre-Henri Bunel was convicted by a secret French military court of passing classified documents that identified potential NATO bombing targets in Serbia to a Serbian agent during the Kosovo war in 1998.

Bunel's case was transferred from a civilian court to keep the details of the case classified. Bunel's character witnesses and psychologists notwithstanding, the system "got him" for telling the truth about Al Qaeda and who has actually been behind the terrorist attacks commonly blamed on that group. It is noteworthy that that Yugoslav government, the government with whom Bunel was asserted by the French government to have shared information, claimed that Albanian and Bosnian guerrillas in the Balkans were being backed by elements of "Al Qaeda." We now know that these guerrillas were being backed by money provided by the Bosnian Defense Fund, an entity established as a special fund at Bush-influenced Riggs Bank and directed by Richard Perle and Douglas Feith.”

In his article ‘The struggle against terrorism cannot be won by military means’ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2005/jul/08/july7.development), Robin Cook stated:

"Osama bin Laden is no more a true representative of Islam than General Mladic, who commanded the Serbian forces, could be held up as an example of Christianity. After all, it is written in the Qur'an that we were made into different peoples not that we might despise each other, but that we might understand each other.

Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians. Inexplicably, and with disastrous consequences, it never appears to have occurred to Washington that once Russia was out of the way, Bin Laden's organisation would turn its attention to the west.

The danger now is that the west's current response to the terrorist threat compounds that original error. So long as the struggle against terrorism is conceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the west emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation. Success will only come from isolating the terrorists and denying them support, funds and recruits, which means focusing more on our common ground with the Muslim world than on what divides us"

Robin Cook died under mysterious circumstances, just as John Smith and David Kelly did, or was Robin murdered by those who did not want him to proceed further by writing a book about such matters?

NGOs Take Over Government Schools

Recently, members of the Punjab Assembly strongly criticised the provincial government’s policy under which educational institutions will be handed over to non-government organisations; they called for the accountability of NGOs.

The provincial assembly members said that ‘the NGOs are taking over costly government school buildings on the pretext of improving education. They use school buildings for commercial purposes, and harass the regular staff and try to get them transferred. How does the government intend to retake control of such schools?’

Punjab’s education minister read out the department’s reply to the question and said ‘the reports were not true, as the NGOs only had the authority to file an application against teachers. Nobody has complained that these NGOs are using school buildings for commercial purposes’.

Ministers usually say such things to push things under the proverbial carpet of bureaucracy.

A member of the assembly asked for the formation of a House Committee to look into the affairs of the NGOs managing government schools. She also questioned ‘why government schools were being handed over to the NGOs when an education department existed.’

An opposition MPA said she had ‘proof of the NGOs’ misappropriation of funds, as they did not allow public representatives to check their records. They even stop public representatives from entering schools.’

An MPA said ‘nobody among the officials was monitoring what NGOs were doing with schools handed over to them. Under what law are the schools being handed over to the NGOs, and how many schools have been handed over to the NGOs? If NGOs are interested in improving the education standards, why are they not taking over schools in remote areas and are instead focussing on institutions in Lahore?’

A minister said that ‘the NGOs are using school reforms as a cover to seize government school buildings. In my own village, an NGO is also involved in the same exercise by obtaining an order to take over the Rs 250 million building.’

The education minister said ‘out of the 1,164 schools, 340 in Lahore had been handed over to the NGOs. The previous regime started the practice of handing over government schools to the NGOs under the Punjab Local Government Ordinance 2001. The current government was handing over only those schools to the NGOs that lacked basic facilities.’

The speaker of the House, however, referred the matter to the House committee on education.

With so many questions asked, one expects satisfactory answers. When the government wishes that controversial matters be forgotten, it efficiently forms committees whose enquiry reports are seldom made public, and the result is that we seldom learn from our mistakes.

Accountability is a good thing if it starts with the corrupt politicians, the feudal landowners, the coup-creators and traitors amidst us. In such troubled times, foreign sponsored non-government organizations with their deep pockets need to be carefully monitored and held accountable. Practically all educated men and women fall for the traps laid by foreign agencies who wish to further educate and reform us. We need good individuals to come forward to reform the education system in Pakistan, retain talent through carefully created opportunities, and move up the ladder of worldly success. Only with the correct balance between here and the hereafter, can Pakistan move forward.

Last November I met with a soft-spoken Sikh from California, Pritpal Singh, who said that plans were underway to establish the Guru Nanak University near Lahore. When questioned why Indian Sikhs chose Pakistan, he admitted that the Sikhs belonged more to this land than they did to any other. He was happy to see the government of Pakistan allocate for the establishment of the Guru Nanak University many acres of land out of the evacuee trust property. Pritpal Singh’s visiting card showed that he was the coordinator for the entire project, which had a board of governors with important men in the government holding key positions. Here was a project that combined the vision of a few zealous Sikhs and the support lent by the government.

Of course, the job of all government functionaries and public servants is to ensure that they do not follow destructive foreign agendas, no matter how many Dollars flow into such projects or into their own. How would America react if Muslims donated directly or through their NGOs, large sums of money to prestigious universities to have their syllabus and other ideals changed? But we do not need to do that, just as Muslims achieved long ago in Spain, we need to set up our own centres of learning that allow students to become not just wage-earners but rather adults who see the world as one family which God wants us to manage efficiently and with responsibility.

Too much change does not change anything. Sometimes, the more things change the more they remain the same. Our elitist educational institutions have now relegated themselves to the status of being expensive syllabus finishers, enrollers of brilliant children who score multiple straight A’s in Cambridge examinations, exporters of brain power to the west, and stone walls of opposition to whatever good remains in eastern cultures and religions. It is this last bit that I wish to see changed within my lifetime.