NATO funding, arming, & simultaneously fighting Al
Qaeda from Mali to Syria.
January 11, 2013
(LD) - A deluge of articles have been quickly put into circulation defending
France's military intervention in the African nation of Mali. TIME's article,
"
The
Crisis in Mali: Will French Intervention Stop the Islamist Advance?" decides
that old tricks are the best tricks, and elects the tiresome "War on Terror"
narrative.
TIME claims the intervention seeks to stop "Islamist"
terrorists from overrunning both Africa and all of Europe. Specifically, the
article states:
"...there is a (probably well-founded) fear in France
that a radical Islamist Mali threatens France most of all, since most of the
Islamists are French speakers and many have relatives in France. (Intelligence
sources in Paris have told TIME that they’ve identified aspiring jihadis leaving
France for northern Mali to train and fight.) Al-Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb
(AQIM), one of the three groups that make up the Malian Islamist alliance and
which provides much of the leadership, has also designated France — the
representative of Western power in the region — as a prime target for
attack."
What
TIME elects not to tell readers is that Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM)
is closely allied to the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG whom France
intervened on behalf of during NATO's 2011 proxy-invasion of Libya - providing
weapons, training, special forces and even aircraft to support them in the
overthrow of Libya's government.
As
far back as August of 2011, Bruce Riedel out of the corporate-financier funded
think-tank, the Brookings Institution, wrote "
Algeria
will be next to fall," where he gleefully predicted success in Libya would
embolden radical elements in Algeria, in particular AQIM. Between extremist
violence and the prospect of French airstrikes, Riedel hoped to see the fall of
the Algerian government. Ironically Riedel noted:
Algeria
has expressed particular concern that the unrest in Libya could lead to the
development of a major safe haven and sanctuary for al-Qaeda and other extremist
jihadis.
And
thanks to NATO, that is exactly what Libya has become -
a
Western sponsored sanctuary for Al-Qaeda.
AQIM's headway in
northern Mali and now French involvement will see the conflict inevitably spill
over into Algeria. It should be noted that Riedel is a co-author of "
Which
Path to Persia?" which openly conspires to arm yet another
US State
Department-listed terrorist organization (list as #28), the Mujahedin-e
Khalq (MEK) to wreak havoc across Iran and help collapse the government there -
illustrating a pattern of using clearly terroristic organizations, even those
listed as so by the US State Department, to carry out US foreign
policy.
Geopolitical analyst Pepe Escobar noted a more direct connection
between LIFG and AQIM in an Asia Times piece titled, "
How al-Qaeda got
to rule in Tripoli:"
"Crucially, still in 2007, then al-Qaeda's number two, Zawahiri,
officially announced the merger between the LIFG and al-Qaeda in the Islamic
Mahgreb (AQIM). So, for all practical purposes, since then, LIFG/AQIM have been
one and the same - and Belhaj was/is its emir. "
"Belhaj,"
referring to Hakim Abdul Belhaj, leader of LIFG in Libya, led with NATO support,
arms, funding, and diplomatic recognition, the overthrowing of Muammar Qaddafi
and has now plunged the nation into unending racist and tribal, genocidal
infighting. This intervention has also seen the rebellion's epicenter of
Benghazi peeling off from Tripoli
as
a semi-autonomous "Terror-Emirate." Belhaj's latest campaign has shifted to
Syria
where
he was admittedly on the Turkish-Syrian border pledging weapons, money, and
fighters to the so-called "Free Syrian Army," again, under the auspices of NATO
support.
Image: NATO's intervention in Libya has resurrected
listed-terrorist organization and Al Qaeda affiliate, LIFG. It had previously
fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now has fighters, cash and weapons, all
courtesy of NATO, spreading as far west as Mali, and as far east as Syria. The
feared "global Caliphate" Neo-Cons have been scaring Western children with for a
decade is now taking shape via US-Saudi, Israeli, and Qatari machinations, not
"Islam." In fact, real Muslims have paid the highest price in fighting this real
"war against Western-funded terrorism."
....
LIFG,
which with French arms, cash, and diplomatic support, is
now
invading northern Syria on behalf of NATO's attempted regime change there,
officially merged with Al Qaeda in 2007 according to the US Army's West Point
Combating
Terrorism Center (CTC). According to the CTC, AQIM and LIFG share not only
ideological goals, but strategic and even tactical objectives. The weapons LIFG
received most certainly made their way into the hands of AQIM on their way
through the porous borders of the Sahara Desert and into northern Mali.
In
fact, ABC News reported in their article, "
Al
Qaeda Terror Group: We 'Benefit From' Libyan Weapons," that:
A leading member of an al Qaeda-affiliated terror group
indicated the organization may have acquired some of the thousands of powerful
weapons that went missing in the chaos of the Libyan uprising, stoking long-held
fears of Western officials.
"We have been one of the main beneficiaries
of the revolutions in the Arab world," Mokhtar Belmokhtar, a leader of the north
Africa-based al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb [AQIM], told the Mauritanian news
agency ANI Wednesday. "As for our benefiting from the [Libyan] weapons, this is
a natural thing in these kinds of circumstances."
It
is no coincidence that as the Libyan conflict was drawing to a conclusion,
conflict erupted in northern Mali. It is part of a premeditated geopolitical
reordering that began with toppling Libya, and since then, using it as a
springboard for invading other targeted nations, including Mali, Algeria, and
Syria with heavily armed, NATO-funded and aided terrorists.
French
involvement may drive AQIM and its affiliates out of northern Mali, but they are
almost sure to end up in Algeria, most likely by design. Algeria was able to
balk subversion during the early phases of the
US-engineered
"Arab Spring" in 2011, but it surely has not escaped the attention of the
West who is in the midst of transforming a region stretching from Africa to
Beijing and Moscow's doorsteps - and in a fit of geopolitical schizophrenia -
using terrorists both as a casus belli to invade and as an inexhaustible
mercenary force to do it.
