Islamic State Created by United States

Nikolai BOBKIN

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

The battle flag is raised and waving. The United States has launched an air campaign against the Islamic State delivering strikes in Iraq and Syria. It is done without the permission of the Syrian government and the United Nations Security Council. There were allegations on the part of Russia and Iran that the final objective of the US-initiated operation was the elimination of Syrian infrastructure. The concern Moscow and Tehran have expressed appears to be justified. 

Rear Admiral John Kirby, the spokesman of US Defense Department, reported that the US aviation hit 12 oil installations on Syrian soil that were supposedly under the Islamic State control. The Admiral said more similar strikes are planned. On June 25, 2011 a memorandum of understanding on the construction of Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline was signed in Bushehr. And the unrest in Syria went on the rise right after this agreement was concluded. They are right saying the war waged by the US against the government of Bashar Assad is a war for oil and gas. Damascus was added to the list of US enemies in 2009 when Assad rejected the proposal to take part in the construction of US-sponsored Qatar-Europe pipeline going through the Syrian territory. Instead Syria preferred to strike a deal with Iran on building a gas route going across Iraq to the Mediterranean shore. Back then Henry Kissinger made his frank admittance pronouncing the phrase to become famous afterwards, «oil is much too important a commodity to be left in the hands of the Arabs». 

The creation of caliphate on the territory of Iraq and Syria will make US (ExxonMobil Corporation) and British (BP и Royal Dutch Shell) oil producing companies suffer losses in Iraq and lose access to Syrian hydrocarbons (after the regime change in Damascus as Americans apply efforts to topple the Syrian government). 

The US put up with the Islamic State till it had been fighting the Syrian government forces. It was declared war on as soon as its armed formations invaded Iraq and proclaimed the creation of a new state. No double standards, it’s all about the US elite’s aspiration to gain global control, the war with the Islamic State is nothing else but a local operation, a part of a bigger plan. 

The US policy has many inconsistencies and mismatches as Washington finds it harder to impose its conditions on the rest of the world. No doubt Syria will remain the main target for the United States as an element of the policy aimed at weakening Russia. The Islamic State was created by the United States; the goal is to generate a powerful destabilizing wave striking deeper into Eurasia. Now he US is clandestinely preparing the overthrow of Bashar Assad. That’s how many countries perceive the unilateral actions of Washington against the Islamic State. The Obama’s plans to form a broad coalition have failed. Americans have convinced the Persian Gulf states (Bahrein, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates) to compensate the expenditure. The US has also managed to make Jordan permit the use of its infrastructure to deliver airstrikes by NATO member-states: Great Britain, France, Belgium and Denmark. According to US State Department, 54 states and three international organizations – the European Union, NATO and the League of Arab States - have promised to contribute into the campaign. But the participation is not universal as US State Secretary John Kerry has said. Few countries trust the United States of America now. 

The world has not forgotten that then United States invaded Iraq in 2003 without the sanction of United Nations Security Council. Back then Washington said that Iraq was working on weapons of mass destruction program and the use of force was needed to disarm it. There was no United Nations Security Council’s vote because Russia, China and France let know that any draft resolution mentioning the use of force against Iraq would have been vetoed. Back then the United States blatantly ignored public opinion and launched an offensive against Iraq to destroy the country. The implications are felt nowadays. Now America has done the very same thing again. 

The history is repeating itself. On January 29, 2014 James Robert Clapper, the Director of National Intelligence, made a Statement for the Record Worldwide Threat Assessment of the US Intelligence Community before the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. He mentioned Syria presenting iffy figures on the composition of rebels’ formations. The main thing in his report was the affirmation that «moderate» opposition elements accounted for 80% of the anti-government forces in the country. He supported the idea of providing them with financial aid, something the US Senate had secretly voted for. Now all these «moderates» have suddenly turned into uncompromising terrorists. America has unleashed a war against just one of the groups. Please note – not against terror in general but only against the group called the Islamic State. It would be interesting to know what US intelligence leaders think about the «moderate» Jabhat Al-Nusra, a Syrian jihadist group and a branch of Al-Qaeda fighting against the Bashar Assad’s government?

In response to air strikes against Syria the Jabhat al-Nusra leaders said they were ready to counter the United States along with the Islamic State. The US actions consolidate terrorists. Talking to CBS two years ago Obama said that Al-Qaeda was decimated and rendered ineffective. Just recently he said that in the recent two years the militants have used the chaos brought about by the Syrian civil war to their advantage and restored their fighting capability. The President never admitted that the chaos ensuing as a result of civil war going on in Syria is a consequence of US actions in the Middle East. 

General Martin Dempsey, the current Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believes that the Islamic State cannot be defeated neither in Syria, nor in Iraq without having boots on the ground. According to him, a political decision is needed to bring the troops in. If it happens a wave of destabilization will go beyond the boundaries of Syria and Iraq and the terrorist ranks will be filled with new warriors. It will open breath taking prospects for US military-industrial complex.

 

Que devrait faire l'Europe face à un “Djihadistan” au Moyen-Orient?

Que devrait faire l'Europe face à un “Djihadistan” au Moyen-Orient?

par Jean-Paul Baquiast

Ex: http://www.dedefensa.org

Appelons “Djihadistan” un nouvel Etat qui s'installerait, à cheval sur la Syrie (dans le nord-est du pays) et sur l'Irak (dans l'Ouest et le Nord). Il résulterait des succès que rencontre actuellement le groupe djihadiste dirigé par l'Irakien Abou Bakr Al-Baghdadi, nommé l'Etat islamique en Irak et au Levant (EIIL). L'ambition de ces combattants est de mettre en place un véritable nouvel Etat dans ces régions, contrôlant les populations, les ressources (pétrolières) et les territoires. Il s'agirait d'un Etat appliquant une charia rigoureuse capable de lui donner une puissance offensive idéologique bien au delà de ses frontières. Or l'Europe ne peut rester indifférente : l'EIIL séduit des centaines, peut-être des milliers, de jeunes musulmans européens, venus se battre dans ses rangs, essentiellement en Syrie.

Que pourrions nous conseiller, si nous étions en charge d'une encore improbable diplomatie européenne ?

• Prier instamment les Américains de ne pas intervenir militairement. C'est pourtant semble-t-il ce qu'ils se préparent à faire, en se limitant d'ailleurs à des frappes aériennes, envois d'armes et autres mesures aux retombées plus catastrophiques les unes que les autres. Il faut rappeler aux Américains que si la situation est ce qu'elle est aujourd'hui, c'est dans la continuité des politiques belliqueuses inaugurées par Bush. La chute de Saddam Hussein, qu'ils avaient provoquée, principalement pour s'emparer de ses ressources en pétrole, a contribué à soulever le couvercle d'une marmite qui depuis ne s'est jamais refermée. Qu'ils se limitent dorénavant à défendre leurs intérêts directs, par exemple les voies de communication à travers les détroits.

• Consulter les principaux Etats directement menacés par le futur Djihadistan, afin de définir avec eux des politiques de prévention, à moduler au cas par cas, et que l'Europe pourrait appuyer. Ces Etats, concernés à des titres différents sont la Russie, l'Iran, la Turquie, l'Egypte et, un peu plus loin, les pays du Maghreb, notamment l'Algérie. Il conviendra par contre de déployer la plus grande prudence à l'égard des pays du Golfe, notamment l'Arabie saoudite et le Qatar. Ceux-ci jouent simultanément plusieurs jeu, dont ils se servent pour abuser le monde entier: le jeu de leurs intérêts pétroliers et de leurs investissements économiques dans le monde, le jeu de l'Amérique, le jeu des multiples djihadistes qu'ils financent partout. Des contacts devront évidemment aussi être pris avec le Pakistan, sans oublier cependant que celui-ci pourrait prochainement se radicaliser sous l'effet des groupes djihadistes qui l'attaqueront de plus en plus et pourraient y prendre le pouvoir un jour.

• Cesser de tenter, à la suite des Américains, de renverser Bashar al Assad. La politique de la Russie, récemment rappelée par Vladimir Poutine, est la bonne: sans approuver ses excès considérer qu'il est seul à pouvoir empêcher une extension de l'EIIL à toute la Syrie

• Pratiquer une politique de non-intervention active à l'égard des différentes composantes du Djihadistan. Celles-ci sont trop diverses pour s'entendre longtemps. On verra ressurgir les oppositions entre tribus, entre sunnites, chiites et Kurdes, entre émirs et combattants d'origines différentes voulant exploiter à leur seul profit les conquêtes pétrolières faites. Il y a tout lieu de penser qu'en quelques mois, la belle union espérée par l'EIIL se sera désagrégée, et que des modus vivendi redeviendront possibles avec les voisins et avec les Européens eux-mêmes. Il suffirait sans doute d'attendre un peu. Malheureusement l'attente n'est pas une vertu que pratiquent les excités et néo-cons occidentaux de tous bords.

• Renforcer sur le territoire européen les politiques et de contrôle et de défense à l'égard des djihadistes, extérieurs ou provenant de l'Europe elle-même, qui tenteraient de la déstabiliser. Sur ce plan, que nous n'aborderons pas ici, les Européens auront fort à faire. Ils ne pourront compter que sur eux-mêmes à cette fin.

A partir de cela, un point très difficile restera à résoudre: comment l'Europe devrait-elle se comporter pour tenter de limiter les aventures de toutes sortes auxquelles pousse actuellement Israël, fort de l'appui américain - tout en assurant le cas échéant à l'Etat juif la nécessaire protection qu'il serait en droit d'attendre de l'Europe en cas d'embrasement de la région ?

Il semble que, pour Vladimir Poutine, se pose une question de même nature. Ce serait une raison de plus pour que les Européens se concertent avec les Russes afin de définir des politiques communes au Moyen Orient.

Jean-Paul Baquiast

Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia

Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia: Has the House of Saud seen its Stalingrad?

By Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya

 

Url of this article:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/volgograd-and-the-conquest-of-eurasia-will-the-house-of-saud-see-its-stalingrad/5363440

The events in Volgograd are part of a much larger body of events and a multi-faceted struggle that has been going on for decades as part of a cold war after the Cold War—the post-Cold War cold war, if you please—that was a result of two predominately Eurocentric world wars. When George Orwell wrote his book 1984 and talked about a perpetual war between the fictional entities of Oceania and Eurasia, he may have had a general idea about the current events that are going on in mind or he may have just been thinking of the struggle between the Soviet Union and, surrounded by two great oceans, the United States of America.

So what does Volgograd have to do with the dizzying notion presented? Firstly, it is not schizophrenic to tie the events in Volgograd to either the conflict in the North Caucasus and to the fighting in Syria or to tie Syria to the decades of fighting in the post-Soviet North Caucasus. The fighting in Syria and the North Caucuses are part of a broader struggle for the mastery over Eurasia. The conflicts in the Middle East are part of this very grand narrative, which to many seems to be so far from the reality of day to day life.

 “Bandar Bush” goes to Mother Russia

For the purposes of supporting such an assertion we will have to start with the not-so-secret visit of a shadowy Saudi regime official to Moscow. Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the infamous Saudi terrorist kingpin and former House of Saud envoy to Washington turned intelligence guru, last visited the Russian Federation in early-December 2013. Bandar bin Sultan was sent by King Abdullah to solicit the Russian government into abandoning the Syrians. The goal of Prince Bandar was to make a deal with the Kremlin to let Damascus be overtaken by the Saudi-supported brigades that were besieging the Syrian government forces from Syria’s countryside and border regions since 2011. Bandar met with Russian President Vladimir Putin and the two held closed-door discussions about both Syria and Iran at Putin’s official residence in Novo-Ogaryovo.

The last meeting that Bandar had with Putin was a few months earlier in July 2013. That meeting was also held in Russia. The July talks between Prince Bandar and President Putin also included Secretary Nikolai Patrushev, the head of the Security Council of the Russian Federation. One would also imagine that discussion about the Iranians increased with each visit too, as Bandar certainly tried to get the Russians on bad terms with their Iranian allies.

After Bandar’s first meeting with President Putin, it was widely reported that the House of Saud wanted to buy Russia off. Agence France-Presse and Reuters both cited the unnamed diplomats of the Arab petro-monarchies, their March 14 lackeys in Lebanon, and their Syrian opposition puppets as saying that Saudi Arabia offered to sign a lucrative arms contract with Moscow and give the Kremlin a guarantee that the Arab petro-sheikdoms would not threaten the Russian gas market in Europe or use Syria for a gas pipeline to Europe.

Russia knew better than to do business with the House of Saud. It had been offered a lucrative arms deal by the Saudi regime much earlier, in 2008, to make some backdoor compromises at the expense of Iran. After the compromises were made by Moscow the House of Saud put the deal on ice. If the media leaks in AFP and Reuters were not tactics or lies in the first place aimed at creating tensions between the Syrian and Russian governments, the purportedly extravagant bribes to betray Syria were wasted on the ears of Russian officials.

The House of Saud and the undemocratic club of Arab petro-monarchies that form the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) have always talked large about money. The actions of these self portrayed lords of the Arabia Peninsula have almost never matched their words and promises. To anyone who deals with them, the House of Saud and company are known for habitually making grand promises that they will never keep, especially when it comes to money. Even when money is delivered, the full amount committed is never given and much of it is stolen by their corrupt partners and cronies. Whether it is the unfulfilled 2008 arms contract with Russia that was facilitated with the involvement of Iraqi former CIA asset Iyad Allawi or the overabundant commitments of financial and logistical aid to the Lebanese and Palestinian peoples that never materialized, the Arab petro-sheikhdoms have never done more than talk grandly and then get their propagandists to write articles about their generosity and splendor. Underneath all the grandeur and sparkles there has always been bankruptcy, insecurity, and emptiness.

A week after the first meeting with Bandar, the Kremlin responded to the media buzz about the attempted bribe by Saudi Arabia. Yury Ushakov, one of Putin’s top aides and the former Russian ambassador to the US, categorically rejected the notion that any deal was accepted or even entertained by the Kremlin. Ushakov avowed that not even bilateral cooperation was discussed between the Saudis and Russia. According to the Kremlin official, the talks between Bandar and Putin were simply about the policies of Moscow and Riyadh on Syria and the second international peace conference being planned about Syria in Geneva, Switzerland.

More Leaks: Fighting Fire with Fire?

If his objective was to get the Russians to abandon Syria, Prince Bandar left both meetings in Russia empty-handed. Nevertheless, his visit left a trail of unverifiable reports and speculation. Discretion is always needed when analyzing these accounts which are part of the information war about Syria being waged on all sides by the media. The planted story from the Saudi side about trying to buy the Russians was not the only account of what took place in the Russian-Saudi talks. There was also a purported diplomatic leak which most likely surfaced as a counter-move to the planted story about Bandar’s proposal. This leak elaborated even further on the meeting between Bandar and Putin. Threats were made according to the second leak that was published in Arabic by the Lebanese newspaper As-Safir on August 21, 2013.

According to the Lebanese newspaper, not only did Prince Bandar tell the Russians during their first July meeting that the regimes of the GCC would not threaten the Russian gas monopoly in Europe, but he made promises to the Russians that they could keep their naval facility on the Mediterranean coast of Syria and that he would give the House of Saud’s guarantee to protect the 2014 Winter Olympics being held in the North Caucasian resort city of Sochi, on the eastern coast of the Black Sea, from the Chechen separatist militias under Saudi control. If Moscow cooperated with Riyadh and Washington against Damascus, the leak discloses that Bandar also stated that the same Chechen militants fighting inside Syria to topple the Syrian government would not be given a role in Syria’s political future.

When the Russians refused to betray their Syrian allies, Prince Bandar then threatened Russia with the cancellation of the second planned peace conference in Geneva and with the unleashing of the military option against the Syrians the leak imparts.

This leak, which presents a veiled Saudi threat about the intended attacks on the Winter Olympics in Sochi, led to a frenzy of speculations internationally until the end of August 2013, amid the high tensions arising from the US threats to attack Syria and the threats coming from Iran to intervene on the side of their Syrians allies against the United States. Originating from the same politically affiliated media circle in Lebanon, reports about Russian military preparations to attack Saudi Arabia in response to a war against Syria began to circulate from the newspaper Al-Ahed also, further fueling the chain of speculations.

A House of Saud Spin on the Neo-Con “Redirection”

Seymour Hersh wrote in 2007 that after the 2006 defeat of Israel in Lebanon that the US government had a new strategy called the “redirection.” According to Hersh, the “redirection” had “brought the United States closer to an open confrontation with Iran and, in parts of the region, propelled it into a widening sectarian conflict between Shiite and Sunni Muslims.” With the cooperation of Saudi Arabia and all the same players that helped launch Osama bin Ladin’s career in Afghanistan, the US government took “part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria.” The most important thing to note is what Hersh says next: “A by-product 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.”

A new House of Saud spin on the “redirection” has begun. If there is anything the House of Saud knows well, it is rounding up fanatics as tools at the service of Saudi Arabia’s patrons in Washington. They did it in Afghanistan, they did it Bosnia, they have done it in Russia’s North Caucasus, they did it in Libya, and they are doing it in both Lebanon and Syria. It does not take the British newspaper The Independent to publish an article titled “Mass murder in the Middle East is funded by our friends the Saudis” for the well-informed to realize this.

The terrorist bombings in Lebanon mark a new phase of the conflict in Syria, which is aimed at forcing Hezbollah to retreat from Syria by fighting in a civil war on its home turf. The attacks are part of the “redirection.” The House of Saud has accented this new phase through its ties to the terrorist attacks on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut on November 19, 2013. The attacks were carried out by individuals linked to the notorious Ahmed Al-Assir who waged a reckless battle against the Lebanese military from the Lebanese city of Sidon as part of an effort to ignite a sectarian civil war in Lebanon.

Al-Assir’s rise, however, was politically and logistically aided by the House of Saud and its shameless Hariri clients in Lebanon. He is also part of the same “redirection” policy and current that brought Fatah Al-Islam to Lebanon. This is why it is no surprise to see Hariri’s Future Party flag flying alongside Al-Qaeda flags in Lebanon. After Al-Assir’s failed attempt to start a sectarian Lebanese civil war, he went into hiding and it was even alleged that he was taken in by one of the GCC embassies.

In regard to the House of Saud’s roles in the bombings in Lebanon, Hezbollah would confirm that the attack on the Iranian Embassy in Beirut was linked to the House of Saud. Hezbollah’s leadership would report that the Abdullah Izzam Brigade, which is affiliated to Al-Qaeda and tied to the bombings, is directly linked to the intelligence services of Saudi Arabia.

Moreover, the Saudi agent, Majed Al-Majed, responsible for the attack would be apprehended by Lebanese security forces in late-December 2013. He had entered Lebanon after working with Al-Nusra in Syria. Fars News Agency, an Iranian media outlet, would report on January 2, 2014 that unnamed Lebanese sources had also confirmed that they had discovered that the attack was linked to Prince Bandar.

Wrath of the House of Saud Unleashed?

A lot changed between the first and second meetings that Prince Bandar and Vladimir Putin had, respectively in July 2013 and December 2013. The House of Saud expected its US patron to get the Pentagon involved in a conventional bombing campaign against Syria in the month of September. It is more than likely that Riyadh was in the dark about the nature of secret negotiations that the US and Iran were holding through the backchannel of Oman in the backdrop of what appeared to be an escalation towards open war.

Bandar’s threat to reassess the House of Saud’s ties with Washington is probably a direct result of the US government keeping the House of Saud in the dark about using Syria as a means of negotiating with the Iranian government. US officials may have instigated the House of Saud to intensify its offensive against Syria to catalyze the Iranians into making a deal to avoid an attack on Syria and a regional war. Moreover, not only did the situation between the US and Iran change, Russia would eventually sign an important energy contract for Syrian natural gas in the Mediterranean Sea. The House of Saud has been undermined heavily in multiple ways and it is beginning to assess its own expendability.

If one scratches deep enough, they will find that the same ilk that attacked the Iranian Embassy in Beirut also attacked the Russian Embassy in Damascus. Both terrorist attacks were gifts to Iran and Russia, which served as reprisals for the Iranian and Russian roles in protecting Syria from regime change and a destructive war. It should, however, be discerned if the House of Saud is genuinely lashing out at Iran and Russia or if it being manipulated to further the goals of Washington in the US negotiations with Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus.

In the same manner, the House of Saud wants to generously reward Hezbollah too for its role in protecting Syria by crippling Hezbollah domestically in Lebanon. Riyadh may possibly not want a full scale war in Lebanon like the Israelis do, but it does want to neutralize and eliminate Hezbollah from the Lebanese landscape. In this regard, Saudi Arabia has earnestly been scheming to recruit Lebanon’s President Michel Suleiman and the Lebanese military against Hezbollah and its supporters.

The Saud grant of three billion dollars to the Lebanese Armed Forces is not only blood money being given to Lebanon as a means of exonerating Saudi Arabia for its role in the terrorist bombings that have gripped the Lebanese Republic since 2013, the Saudi money is also aimed at wishfully restructuring the Lebanese military as a means of using it to neutralize Hezbollah. In line with the House of Saud’s efforts, pledges from the United Arab Emirates and reports that NATO countries are also planning on donating money and arms to the Lebanese military started.

In addition to the terrorists bombings in Lebanon and the attack on the Russian Embassy in Damascus, Russia has also been attacked. Since the Syrian conflict intensified there has been a flaring of tensions in Russia’s North Caucasus and a breakout of terrorist attacks. Russian Muslim clerics, known for their views on co-existence between Russia’s Christian and Muslim communities and anti-separatist views, have been murdered. The bombings in Volgograd are just the most recent cases and an expansion into the Volga of what is happening in the North Caucasus, but they come disturbingly close to the start of the Winter Olympics that Prince Bandar was saying would be “protected” if Moscow betrayed Syria.

Can the House of Saud Stand on its Own Feet?

It is a widely believed that you will find the US and Israelis pulling a lot of the strings if you look behind the dealings of the House of Saud. That view is being somewhat challenged now. Prince Mohammed bin Nawaf bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the UK, threatened that Saudi Arabia will go it alone against Syria and Iran in a December 2013 article. The letter, like the Saudi rejection of their UN Security Council seat, was airing the House of Saud’s rage against the realists running US foreign policy.

In this same context, it should also be noted for those that think that Saudi Arabia has zero freedom of action that Israeli leaders have stressed for many years that Tel Aviv needs to cooperate secretly with Saudi Arabia to manipulate the US against Iran. This is epitomized by the words of Israeli Brigadier-General Oded Tira: “We must clandestinely cooperate with Saudi Arabia so that it also persuades the US to strike Iran.”

Along similar lines, some may point out that together the House of Saud and Israel got France to delay an interim nuclear agreement between the Iranians and the P5+1 in Geneva. The House of Saud rewarded Paris through lucrative deals, which includes making sure that the grant it gives to the Lebanese military is spent on French military hardware. Saad Hariri, the main Saudi client in Lebanon, even met Francois Hollande and French officials in Saudi Arabia in context of the deal. Appeasing the House of Saud and Israel, French President Hollande has replicated France’s stonewalling of the P5+1 interim nuclear deal with Iran by trying to spoil the second Syria peace conference in Geneva by saying that there can be no political solution inside Syria if President Bashar Al-Assad stays in power.

Again, however, it has to be asked, is enraging Saudi Arabia part of a US strategy to make the Saudis exert maximum pressure on Tehran, Moscow, and Damascus so that the United States can optimize its gains in negotiations? After all, it did turn out that the US was in league with France in Geneva and that the US used the French stonewalling of an agreement with Iran to make additional demands from the Iranians during the negotiations. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov revealed that the US negotiation team had actually circulated a draft agreement that had been amended in response to France’s demands before Iran and the other world powers even had a chance to study them. The draft by the US team was passed around, in Foreign Minister Lavrov’s own words, “literally at the last moment, when we were about to leave Geneva.”

Instead of debating on the level of independence that the House of Saud possesses, it is important to ask if Saudi Arabia can act on its own and to what degree can the House of Saud act as an independent actor. This looks like a far easier question to answer. It is highly unlikely that Saudi Arabia can act on its own in most instances or even remain an intact state. This is why Israeli strategists very clearly state that Saudi Arabia is destined to fall apart. “The entire Arabian Peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures, and the matter is inevitable especially in Saudi Arabia,” the Israeli Yinon Plan deems. Strategists in Washington are also aware of this and this is also why they have replicated models of a fragmented Saudi Arabia. This gives rise to another important question: if they US assess that the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia is not a sustainable entity, will it use it until it burns out like a flame? Is this what is happening and is Saudi Arabia being sacrificed or setup to take the blame as the “fall guy” by the United States?

 Who is Hiding Behind the House of Saud?

Looking back at Lebanon, the messages from international media outlets via their headlines is that the bombings in Lebanon highlight or reflect a power struggle between the House of Saud and Tehran in Lebanon and the rest of the region. Saying nothing about the major roles of the US, Israel, and their European allies, these misleading reports by the likes of journalists like Anne Barnard casually blame everything in Syria and Lebanon on a rivalry between Saudi Arabia and Iran, erasing the entire history behind what has happened and casually sweeping all the interests behind the conflict(s) under the rug. This is dishonest and painting a twisted Orientalist narrative.

The outlets trying to make it sound like all the Middle East’s problems are gravitating around some sort of Iranian and Saudi rivalry might as well write that “the Saudis and Iranians are the sources behind the Israeli occupation of Palestine, the sources behind the Anglo-American invasion of Iraq that crippled the most advanced Arab country, the ones that are blockading medication from reaching Gaza due to their rivalry, the ones who enforced a no-fly zone over Libya, the ones that are launching killer drone attacks on Yemen, and the ones that are responsible for the billions of dollars that disappeared from the Iraqi Treasury in 2003 after Washington and London invaded that country and controlled its finances.” These outlets and reports are tacitly washing the hands of  actors like Washington, Tel Aviv, Paris, and London clean of blood by trying to construct a series of false narratives that either blame everything on a regional rivalry between Tehran and Riyadh or the premise that the Sunni Muslims and Shia Muslims are fighting an eternal war that they are biologically programmed to wage against one another.

Arabs and Iranians and Shias and Sunnis are tacitly painted as un-human creatures that cannot be understood and savages to audiences. The New York Times even dishonestly implies that the Sunni Muslims and Shiite Muslims in Lebanon are killing one another in tit-for-tat attacks. It sneakily implies that Hezbollah and its Lebanese rivals are assassinating one another. Bernard, its reporter in Lebanon who was mentioned earlier, along with another colleague write:

In what have been seen as tit-for-tat attacks, car bombs have targeted Hezbollah-dominated neighborhoods in the southern suburbs of Beirut and Sunni mosques in the northern city of Tripoli.

On Friday, a powerful car bomb killed Mohamad B. Chatah, a former Lebanese finance minister who was a major figure in the Future bloc, a political group that is Hezbollah’s main Sunni rival.

The New York Times is cunningly trying to make its readers think that Hezbollah was responsible for the bombing as part of a Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflict by concluding with an explanation that the slain former Lebanese finance minister belonged to “Hezbollah’s main Sunni rival” after saying that the bombings in Lebanon “have been seen as tit-for-tat attacks” between the areas that support Hezbollah and “Sunni mosques” in Tripoli

The US and Israel wish that a Shiite-Sunni sectarian conflict was occurring in Lebanon and the rest of the Middle East. They have been working for this. It has been them that have been manipulating Saudi Arabia to instigate sectarianism. The US and Israel have been prodding the House of Saud—which does not represent the Sunni Muslims, let alone the people of Saudi Arabia which are under its occupation—against Iran, all the while trying to conceal and justify the conflict being instigated as some sort of “natural” rivalry between Shiites and Sunnis that is being played out across the Middle East. 

It has been assessed with high confidence by outsiders concerned by the House of Saud’s inner dealings that Prince Bandar is one of the three Al-Saud princes managing Saudi Arabia’s security and foreign policy; the other two being Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the Saudi deputy foreign minister and one of King Abdullah’s point men on Syria due to his ties to Syria from his maternal side, and Prince Mohammed bin Nayef bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud, the interior minister. All three of them are tied to the United States more than any of their predecessors. Prince Bandar himself has a long history of working closely with the United States, which explains the endearing moniker of “Bandar Bush” that he is widely called by. “Chemical Bandar” can be added to the list too, because of the reports about his ties to the Syrian chemical weapon attacks in Ghouta.

As a US client, Saudi Arabia is a source of instability because it has been conditioned hence by Washington. Fighting the terrorist and extremist threat is now being used by the US as a point of convergence with Iran, which coincidently has authored the World Against Violence and Extremism (WAVE) motion at the United Nations. In reality, the author of the regional problems and instability has been Washington itself. In a masterstroke, the realists now at the helm of foreign policy are pushing American-Iranian rapprochement on the basis of what Zbigniew Brzezinski, the former national security advisor of the US, said would be based on Tehran and Washington working together to secure Iran’s “volatile regional environment.” “Any eventual reconciliation [between the US and Iranian governments] should be based on the recognition of a mutual strategic interest in stabilizing what currently is a very volatile regional environment for Iran,” he explains. The point should not be lost either that Brzezinski is the man who worked with the Saudis to arm the Afghan Mujahedeen against the Soviets after he organized an intelligence operation to fool the Soviets into militarily entering Afghanistan in the first place.

The House of Saud did not work alone in Afghanistan during the Cold War either. It was rigorously backed by Washington. The United States was even more involved in the fighting. It is the same in Syria. If the diplomatic leak is to be believed about the meeting between Bandar and Putin, it is of merit to note that “Bandar Bush” told Putin that any “Saudi-Russian understanding” would also be part of an “American-Russian understanding.”

Has the “Redirection” Seen its Stalingrad?

Volgograd was called Stalingrad for a part of Soviet history, in honour of the Republic of Georgia’s most famous son and Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. It was Volgograd, back then called Stalingrad, where the Germans were stopped and the tide of war in Europe was turned against Hitler and his Axis allies in Europe. The Battle of Stalingrad was where the Nazis were defeated and it was in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe where the bulk of the fighting against the Germans was conducted. Nor is it any exaggeration to credit the Soviets—Russian, Kazakh, Uzbek, Tajik, Tartar, Georgian, Armenian, Ukrainian, Belarusian, Chechen, and all—for doing most of the fighting to defeat the Germans in the Second World War.

Judging by the bellicose 2013 New Years Eve speech of Russian President Vladimir Putin, the terrorist attacks in Volgograd will be the start of another Battle of Stalingrad of some sorts and the launch of another Russian “war on terror.” Many of the terrorists that Russia will go after are in Syria and supported by the House of Saud.

The opponents of the Resistance Bloc that Iran, Syria, Hezbollah, and the Palestinian resistance groups form have called the battlefields in Syria the Stalingrad of Iran and its regional allies. Syria has been a Stalingrad of some sorts too, but not for the Resistance Bloc. The alliance formed by the US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, and Israel has begun to unravel in its efforts to enforce regime change in Syria. The last few years have marked the beginning of a humiliating defeat for those funding extremism, separatism, and terrorism against countries like Russia, China, Iran, and Syria as a means of preventing Eurasian cohesion. Another front of this same battle is being politically waged by the US and the EU in the Ukraine in a move to prevent the Ukrainians from integrating with Belarus, Russia, and Kazakhstan.

Volgograd and the Conquest of Eurasia

While speculation has been entertained with warning in this text, most of what has been explained has not been speculative. The House of Saud has had a role in destabilizing the Russian Federation and organizing terrorist attacks inside Russia. Support or oppose the separatist movements in the North Caucasus, the point is that they have been opportunistically aided and used by the House of Saud and Washington. Despite the authenticity of the narrative about Bandar’s threats against Russia, Volgograd is about Syria and Syria is about Volgograd. Both are events taking place as part of the same struggle. The US has been trying to encroach into Syria as a means of targeting Russia and encroaching deeper in the heart of Eurasia.

When George Orwell wrote 1984 he saw the world divided into several entities at constant or “eternal” war with one another. His fictitious superstates police language, use total surveillance, and utterly manipulate mass communication to indoctrinate and deceive their peoples. Roughly speaking, Orwell’s Oceania is formed by the US and its formal and informal territories in the Western Hemisphere, which the Monroe Doctrine has essentially declared are US colonies, confederated with Britain and the settler colonies-cum-dominions of the former British Empire (Australia, Canada, Ireland, New Zealand, and South Africa). The Orwellian concept of Eurasia is an amalgamation of the Soviet Union with continental Europe. The entity of Eastasia on the other hand is formed around China. Southeast Asia, India, and the parts of Africa that do not fall under the influence of Oceanic South Africa are disputed territory that is constantly fought for. Although not specifically mentioned, it can be extrapolated that Southwest Asia, where Syria is located, or parts of it are probably part of this fictional disputed territory, which includes North Africa.

If we try to fit Orwellian terms onto the present set of global relations, we can say that Oceania has made its moves against Eurasia/Eastasia for control of disputed territory (in the Middle East and North Africa).

1984 is not just a novel, it is a warning from the farseeing Orwell. Nonetheless, never did he imagine that his Eurasia would make cause with or include Eastasia through a core triple alliance and coalition comprised of Russia, China, and Iran. Eurasia will finish, in one way or another, what Oceania has started. All the while, as the House of Saud and the other rulers of the Arab petro-sheikhdoms continue to compete with one another in building fancy towers, the Sword of Damocles is getting heavier over their heads.

 

Copyright © 2014 Global Research

Irak- Syrie : le péril d’un grand état islamiste

L’inconséquence occidentale au pied du mur

Jean Bonnevey
Ex: http://metamag.fr

Des dizaines de jihadistes ont été tués ou capturés en Syrie par les rebelles qui ont décidé de combattre leurs anciens alliés en raison de leurs multiples abus, selon une ONG. Les jihadistes, dont de nombreux étrangers, avaient rejoint la rébellion contre le régime de Bachar al-Assad lorsque la révolte, au départ pacifique, contre le pouvoir s'est militarisée. Signe des ramifications du conflit syrien dans les pays voisins, ce même groupe extrémiste sunnite vient de prendre le contrôle de Falloujah, à 60 km de Bagdad, et de revendiquer un attentat suicide au Liban contre un bastion du Hezbollah, parti chiite qui combat aux côtés du régime syrien.

 

"L'état islamique" a été décrété à Falloujah, grande ville de 300 000 habitants, située à moins de 70 km à l'Ouest de Bagdad. EIIL a nommé un gouverneur pour la ville. L'Etat islamique en Syrie et au Levant (EIIL) est un agrégat de groupuscules liés à Al Qaïda-Irak, fort de plusieurs milliers d'hommes. Il compterait 12 000 combattants en Syrie, où le groupe est proche du Front Al-Nosra. Il est très présent dans plusieurs villes syriennes, dont Alep et Idlib. Des combats entre l'EIIL et d'autres forces rebelles liées à l'ASL (Armée syrienne libre) ont fait ce vendredi au moins 16 morts et des dizaines de blessés. L'EIIL est notamment accusé d'avoir kidnappé, torturé et tué des membres de l'opposition à Assad moins portés sur le djihad, comme le docteur Hussein al-Suleiman.

Voila qui prouve que la guerre contre Saddam Hussein était une stupidité politique fondée de plus sur un mensonge criminel. Voila qui démontre de la même manière que l’aveuglement anti-Assad au nom de la démocratie double la stupidité irakienne d’une ineptie syrienne. L’Occident atlantique a ouvert le chemin à l’établissement d’un califat islamiste regroupant Bagdad et Damas et soutenu par les wahhabites du golfe.

En Irak on a abattu les sunnites laïcs pour imposer des Chiites et en Syrie on veut abattre des chiites laïcs pour le plus grand profit d’islamistes sunnites. Tout cela n’a aucune cohérence, ni aucun sens. Si ce n’est que l’idéologie démocratique mettant dans le même sac tous les régimes autoritaires fait le jeu de tous ceux qui les combattent. Cela conduit à un chaos régional en attendant peut être un nouvel ordre bien plus menaçant que l’ancien. Le processus a été entamé par les guerres contre l’Irak et il se poursuit en Syrie.

Alors que le pouvoir syrien résiste, celui mis en place par les Américains à Bagdad perd pied. Ce sont maintenant deux régimes chiites qui sont menacés et, grâce à Washington, le salut de Bagdad et Damas passe de plus en plus par Téhéran et le Hezbollah.

Beau résultat.

Made in Saudi Arabia: Salafist Radicalism in Africa

Wayne MADSEN

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org

Hardline Islamist radicalism, nurtured by Saudi Arabia’s vast oil wealth, is spreading through Africa at a rapid pace. Radical Salafist and Wahhabist groups with names like Boko Haram, Seleka, and Uamsho, unheard of a decade ago, are massacring Christians during church assemblies, razing Christian villages, and assassinating moderate Islamic clerics. Of course, this Saudi-made mayhem is a godsend for the U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM), which can point to the spread of «Al Qaeda»-linked terrorism to Africa as a reason to increase America’s military presence on the continent and add armed muscle behind Uncle Sam’s quest for Africa’s oil, natural gas, and mineral resources…

While U.S. leaders like President Barack Obama, Secretary of State John Kerry, Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel and others continue to kowtow to Saudi Arabia’s misogynist princelings, including the head of Saudi intelligence, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the Second U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New York has ruled that families of the victims of the 9/11 attack can sue the government of Saudi Arabia for providing material support to the hijackers. In 2005, a federal judge dismissed plaintiff claims against Saudi Arabia ruling that Saudi Arabia enjoyed immunity from such claims pursuant to the Foreign Sovereign Immunities Act. That decision has not been overturned by the federal appellate court.

The court ruling came shortly after former Florida Senator Bob Graham, the chairman of the U.S. Senate Select Committee on Intelligence at the time of the 9/11 attack, once again called for the declassification of 28 pages of the 800-page «Joint Inquiry Into Intelligence Community Activities Before and After the Terrorist Attacks of September 11, 2001,» issued by the Senate and House intelligence oversight committees in 2002. The blacked out 28 pages lays responsibility for the worst terrorist attack on American soil on the doorstep of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, particularly Prince Bandar and his Washington embassy. 

Prince Bandar and his wife paid the San Diego handler of two of the hijackers, Osama Bassnan, through an account at Riggs Bank in Washington. There are now bipartisan calls in Congress for the 28 pages to be declassified. However, the Saudis, who have close ties with the Bush oligarchy and the Israelis, can use their clout to suppress the «smoking gun» U.S. intelligence evidence against them.

It also behooves the American «deep state» to allow the Saudis to continue their support for terrorism because it gives the U.S. military and intelligence community as casus belli for continued military intervention in Africa, the Middle East, and South Asia.

Saudi Wahhabist fingerprints are being found more and more behind the coordinated activities of anti-Christian and anti-Western Salafist groups in Africa. The Nigerian Salafist group Boko Haram, which has attacked Christian villages and moderate Islamic mosques throughout Nigeria and slaughtered Christian and moderate Muslim men, women, and children, made common cause with another Salafist group in Mali, Ansar Dine, in attacking moderate Tuaregs who took over control of northern Mali after a military coup deposed the country’s civilian leadership. Boko Haram, Ansar Dine, and Al Qaeda in the Maghreb began systematically destroying ancient UNESCO-protected shrines of Sufi Muslim saints in Timbuktu and other Malian cities. Ansar Dine pronounced the shrines «haram» of forbidden, according to Salafist dogma.

Boko Haram has also appeared on the scene in the Central African Republic where Muslim Seleka guerrillas helped topple the government of President Francois Bozize and installed one of their own, Michel Djotodia in power in a country where Muslims make up only 15 percent of the population. No sooner had Djotodia and Seleka cemented their hold on the government in the capital of Bangui, Seleka guerrillas began attacking Christians throughout the country, pillaging their villages. Bozize loyalists organized «anti-Balaka,» which means «anti-machete» because many of the Seleka Salafists wield machetes in killing Christians, including women and children. The arrival of 2000 French troops in Bangui did little to assuage the fears of the Christian majority in the country. The Saudis are also fond of blades in carrying out murder. The Saudi government’s preferred execution method for convicted criminals is a sword to the back of the neck on Riyadh’s infamous Deera Square, also known as «Chop Chop Square.»

Attracted by the nation’s oil boom, a large influx of Muslims from abroad have migrated to Angola to work in the oil infrastructure. When, at the end of November of this year Angolan authorities issued requirements for hastily-built mosques to comply with the country’s building registration laws, Salafist interests spread the rumor that Angola was banning Islam and indiscriminately closing mosques. The Angolan government denied the charge. 

The Angolan government announcement may have been too little and too late for the Angolan and other passengers, as well as six crew, aboard Mozambique Airlines flight TM470, which crashed in Namibia while en route from Maputo, Mozambique to Luanda, the Angolan capital. Investigators concluded that the Embraer 190’s captain, Herminio dos Santos Fernandes, tampered with the plane’s autopilot to deliberately crash the plane into the ground. However, investigators failed to consider that many Salafists decided to declare war on Angola after the false rumors were disseminated that Angola had «banned Islam.» 

The lessons of EgyptAir 990, which crashed in 1999 en route from the New York to Cairo, should have been germane. The captain of the EgyptAir Boeing 767 was said to have deliberately crashed his plane into the Atlantic in an act of suicide terrorism, killing all 217 people aboard. But many believe the plane had been tampered with and was used as a dry-run for the 9/11 attack two years later. The plane’s co-pilot, Gameel Al-Batouti was said to have commandeered the controls of the plane to commit suicide and mass murder in the same manner that Mozambique Airlines’s Captain Fernandes was said to have done with his aircraft en route to Luanda.

However, with the U.S. Senate Intelligence Committee, several members of Congress, and a federal judge all pointing to Saudi Arabia as the culprit behind the aviation terrorism of 9/11, a Saudi hand cannot be ruled out being involved in either the EgyptAir 990 or Mozambique Airlines 470 «suicide crashes.»

In Zanzibar, the Saudi-supported Salafists have taken a different tack. Saudi-financed local clerics have formed Uamsho, which has called for acid attacks on foreign tourists such as that committed against two 18-year old British female teachers last August. Uamsho, which is Swahili for «Awakening,» has also claimed credit for brutal acid attacks on Christian and moderate Muslim clerics. 

Saudi-backed Salafists have also attacked Christians in other parts of Africa, particularly in Egypt, Kenya, and Ethiopia. Bandar, the Saudi intelligence chief, reportedly warned Russia that Saudi Arabia would not hesitate to set loose Chechen and other Salafists on the Winter Olympiad in Sochi if Russia did not cut ioff aid to Bashar al-Assad’s government in Syria. Saudi handicraft was also seen in Salafist bombings of St. Theresa's Catholic Church, outside of Abuja, Nigeria; Our Lady of Salvation Catholic Church in Baghdad; and Saints Church in Alexandria, Egypt. In the case of the Alexandria bombing, Israeli intelligence was also fingered with the Saudis in the attack, an insidious alliance that legitimate researchers of the 9/11 attack have become all-too-familiar with. 

Saudi Arabia cannot escape responsibility for attacks on Christians, moderate Muslims, Shi’as, Ahmaddiyas, Sikhs, Hindus, Buddhists, and others around the world. One of Saudi King Abdullah’s cabinet advisers in the Salafist Grand Mufti, Sheikh Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah Aal al-Sheikh. The «holy man» urged his followers to blow up churches outside of Saudi Arabia. President Obama and his top officials, including CIA director John Brennan, have gone to great lengths to appease Saudi terrorism. If the United States truly wants to put a dent in international terrorism, especially in Africa, a couple of well-placed U.S. cruise missile strikes on a few Saudi palaces in Riyadh and Jeddah ought to do the trick.

Finnish-Caucasian Emirate

Finnish-Caucasian Emirate

by Nikolai MALISHEVSKI

Ex: http://www.strategic-culture.org/
 

The facts revealing the «Finnish traсe» in the Boston marathon terrorist bombing have become a thing of general public knowledge. I offer just a cursory look at them to substantiate a warning: Europe is not immune from the events the Bostoners went through in April 2013.

Boston is home to a small community of ethnic Chechens in the United States. The office of Al Kifah is located on Beacon Street. In 1990 the organization sprang from the anti-Soviet jihad movement in Afghanistan. It was suspected of being implicated in the World Trade Center bombing that took place on February 26, 1993, as well as of connection to some terrorist activities on US soil. The bulk of the organization’s offices were closed down, but the Boston branch called Care International continued to function. It raised funds, provided all forms of logistical support, created brigades of suicide bombers and recruited fighters for jihadist causes in the United States. (1) Some of these mercenaries, like Aukai Collins, for instance, came back from Chechnya to collaborate with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) as informants. The United States special services let the Boston center of extremism in peace for about twenty years. The Tsarnaev brothers’ mother recalls, «Tamerlan was ‘really an extremist leader and that they were afraid of … He was controlled by the FBI for five years. They knew what my son was doing. They were following every step of his». (2)

As Finnish media reported on April 21, the Boston terrorist act perpetrators were influenced and directly controlled by the extremist website called Caucasus Center, which is located in Finland and has a reputation of being an information instrument of the Caucasus Emirate. The British Daily Mail published the article called Was Boston Bomber Inspired by Russia's Bin Laden? Mother Claims FBI Tracked Older Brother 'for FIVE YEARS' After Being Told by Moscow of Links to Chechen Terrorists (2) devoted to the links between the Tsarnaev brothers and Doku Umarov who heads the Center. Some American and Turkish journalists say Chechen Fatima Tlisova was a key connecting link between the Caucasus Emirate and the United States special services operating in the Caucasus (including Jamestown Foundation) (4) Islam Saidaev describes how these kind of people were recruited and used by Western and Georgian special services for support of Chechen separatists in his book called To Do Away With a Witness. The author is well acquainted with the details leading to the conclusion that, «The idea to create the Caucasus Emirate, which was spread around among Chechens, was a brainchild of Georgian special services and the Caucasus Center website».

Here are some facts from the biography of Doku Umarov which are not in the books as yet. He was born in 1965 in Achoy-Martan. In July 1992 his name was included into the federal wanted list for murder and rape. On his mother’s side he is a relative of terrorist Movsar Baraev, who took hostages in Nord-Ost Theater in the Moscow district. He is also a cousin of Arbi Baraev, who is well known for abducting people, including French national Vincent Koshtelya, three Britons: Peter Kennedy, Darren Hickey, Rudi Petschi and New Zealand-born Stan Shaw as well as many others. Umarov is a staunch believer in Wahhabism. He goes around by the names of Warrior-1, Abu Muslim and Aisa. By the end of 1990s he ran errands for Khattab, a CIA operative and a Canadian national, allegedly a native Jordanian reported to be deprived of his homeland’s citizenship for links to US special services. In the 2000s Doku Umarov was closely connected to and provided funds for another terrorist - Ruslan Gelaev. With Gelaev gone, he took his place as the leader of criminal gangs in Georgia. Umarov was the last «president» of self-proclaimed Ichkeria (2006-2007). In Russia he is on wanted list for instigating ethnic strife, looting, abductions, mass murders (he personally shot Russians and Chechens) and the complicity in terrorist activities. Not once he claimed responsibility for ordering such terrorist crimes as Nevsky express (2009), Moscow metro (2010) and Domodedovo airport (2011) bombings.

On October 7 2007 Doku Umarov proclaimed himself as emir of Caucasus Emirate - a purported Islamic state spanning several republics in the Russian North Caucasus - calling his followers to start a global jihad, «a holy duty for all the Muslims of the Caucasus». Back then he said, «Today our brothers fight in Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia and Palestine. Whoever attacked Muslims, wherever they may be is our common enemy. It’s not Russia only, but also the United States, Great Britain, Israel, anyone who fights against Islam and Muslims». On June 2010 the United States put him on the list of international terrorists. On March 11 2011 the United Nations Security Council added him to the list of individuals allegedly associated with al-Qaeda. On March 26 2011 the U.S. Department of State authorized a reward of up to $5 million for information leading to the location of Doku Umarov. At that, the United States special services had done nothing to neutralize him till the Boston bombing.

According to Finnish internet media outlet Suomitanaan, the Caucasus Center is just a small part of widely spread extremists’ structure, located in Helsinki, Finland. (3) The organization is tasked with a priority mission of disseminating jihad throughout Europe and the United States. The Center is supported by prominent Finnish politicians and state officials who back the idea of «independent Ichkeria». For instance: Finnish Green party politician, current Minister of Intentional Development Heidi Hautala, former Member of the European Parliament, Tarja Kantola Special Adviser to the Minister for Foreign Affairs, Antero Leitzinger, a researcher at the Finnish Migration Service, being responsible for political asylum applications from the Caucasus. Finland is home to «Battalion of Chechen Martyrs», which added new members to its ranks after the Caucasus Center told would-be shahids (suicide bombers) that Tamerlan Tsarnaev died tortured by Americans. Some structures enjoying the support of Finnish state officials like Finnish-Russian Civic Forum, for instance, help the people who cannot wait «to set the fire of global jihad» to be transferred to other countries. The Boston tragedy brought into light the terrorists structures located in Finland. But the activities of the «Finnish-Caucasian Emirate» spread much further, far beyond the one state boundaries…

In 2011 it was reported that the younger son of former Chechen separatists’ leader Degi Dudaev, a citizen of Lithuania living in Vilnius, was detained by Lithuanian police. Back then Lietuvosrytas wrote that he was accused of being a member of a criminal gang involved in issuing faked Lithuanian passports, which went straight into the hands of Chechens, the same people as the Tsarnaev brothers, allowing them to move freely around the European Union.
1) More in detail: Berger J. Boston's Jihadist Past // Foreign Policy 22.04.2013 // foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/04/22/bostons_jihadist_past; Berger J.M. Jihad Joe: Americans Who Go to War in the Name of Islam. Potomac Books, 2011. - 265 p..
2) Gallagher I., Stewart W. Was Boston bomber inspired by Russia's Bin Laden? // Daily Mail, 20.04.2013 // www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2312331/Was-Boston-bomber-inspired-Doku-Umarov-Mother-claims-FBI-tracked-older-brother7)-years-told-Moscow-links-Chechen-terrorists.html.
3) Boston terrorists were influenced and instructed by "Kavkaz Center", mouthpiece of terrorist Doku Umarov and his "Caucasus Emirate", operating in Helsinki, Finland // Suomitanaan, 21.04.2013 // suomitanaan.blogspot.ru/2013/04/boston-terrorists-were-influenced-and.html.
4) Madsen W. CIA Troublemaking in Caucasus // www.strategic-culture.org/news/2013/05/20/cia-troublemaking-in-caucasus.html

Syrie : Israël joue avec le feu islamiste

Syrie : Israël joue avec le feu islamiste

Ils sont nombreux les « idiots utiles » des fous d’Allah

Jean Bonnevey
Ex: http://metamag.fr/

Il est évident que Tel Aviv s’inquiète à juste titre de l’implication de l’Iran dans le conflit syrien et d’un éventuel renforcement du Hezbollah libanais. Il n’en reste pas moins que son intervention militaire directe dans cette guerre civile la transforme en déflagration régionale. Israël prend des risques et joue avec le feu. A quoi servirait d’affaiblir les chiites radicaux du Liban si la conséquence est la prise du pouvoir à Damas par des sunnites fanatiques et proches de la mouvance Al-Qaïda. On pourrait reprendre la formule « ni Allal, ni casher » adaptée de celle de Churchill sur la destruction de l’Allemagne nazie renforçant la menace soviétique « on a tué le mauvais cochon ».

 

Une intervention contestable

 

"Selon un nouveau bilan, au moins 42 soldats ont été tués et le sort d'une centaine d'autres est inconnu à la suite du raid israélien", a déclaré Rami Abdel Rahmane, directeur de l'Observatoire syrien des droits de l'homme (OSDH). Un premier bilan faisait état de 15 morts. Selon Rami Abdel Rahmane, les trois sites visés par les Israéliens "comptent 150 hommes, mais on ignore si tous s'y trouvaient lors du raid". Les autorités syriennes n'ont, jusqu'à présent, donné aucun bilan officiel, mais le ministère des Affaires étrangères dans une lettre à l'ONU avait affirmé que "cette agression avait causé des morts et des blessés et des destructions graves dans ces positions et dans des régions civiles proches". L’opposition syrienne  s’inquiète donc elle aussi de l’intervention israélienne.

 

Le retour des armes chimiques

 

La Commission d’enquête internationale indépendante sur la Syrie, mandatée par l’ONU, a affirmé lundi qu’elle «n’avait pas obtenu de résultats permettant de conclure que des armes chimiques ont été utilisées par les parties au conflit». «En conséquence et à ce jour la Commission n’est pas en mesure de commenter davantage ces allégations», ajoute un communiqué qui apparaît comme un désaveu des déclarations dimanche à la presse d’un de ses membres, le procureur suisse Carla del Ponte, qui a parlé d’usage de gaz sarin par les rebelles.

 

Général iranien Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan

Del Ponte, qui dans ses précédents mandats, notamment en tant que procureur du Tribunal pénal international pour l’ex-Yougoslavie (TPIY), s’était faite remarquer par des déclarations radicales aux médias, avait affirmé dimanche soir à la chaîne de télévision publique suisse du Tessin, avoir vu un rapport sur «des témoignages recueillis concernant l’utilisation d’armes chimiques, en particulier de gaz neurotoxique, par les opposants et non par le gouvernement».

L’idole des traqueurs de criminel de guerre ne devient plus crédible quand elle témoigne en défaveur des «  gentils auto-proclamés ». Y aurait-il une justice internationale elle aussi politisée ?

 

Carla Del Ponte et Rami Abdel Rahmane

 

Pour Damas, les raids israéliens prouvent que les rebelles sont «les outils d’Israël à l’intérieur» du pays. Et «la communauté internationale doit savoir que la situation dans la région est devenue plus dangereuse après l’agression», a déclaré le ministre de l’Information Omrane al-Zohbi. «Le gouvernement syrien confirme que cette agression ouvre largement la porte à toutes les possibilités», a-t-il ajouté. La télévision syrienne a annoncé en soirée que «les missiles étaient prêts pour frapper des cibles précises en cas de violation», sans plus de précisions.

 

Dans sa lettre à l’ONU, Damas a accusé l’État hébreu d’appuyer les rebelles, notamment le Front Al-Nosra, branche syrienne d’Al-Qaïda. De son côté, l’Armée syrienne libre (ASL, rebelles) a estimé que ses opérations n’étaient «pas liées aux raids israéliens ou à autre chose» tandis que la Coalition de l’opposition a condamné le raid israélien mais accusé le régime d’être responsable de l’affaiblissement de l’armée qu’il utilise «contre la population». L’Iran a aussitôt répliqué par la voix du commandant de l’armée de terre, le général Ahmad-Reza Pourdastan, qui s’est dit prêt à «entraîner» l’armée syrienne.

 

Il n’y a pas qu’Israël bien sûr qui joue avec le feu.

La nouvelle “sainte-alliance” entre la CIA et Al-Qaeda

Igor IGNATCHENKO:

La nouvelle “sainte-alliance” entre la CIA et Al-Qaeda

 

 

La Syrie est inondée de terroristes en tous genres. Al-Qaeda vient d’y commettre une série d’actes terroristes. D’après l’ancien commandant de l’Académie navale turque, l’Amiral Türker Erturk, ces actes ont été commis avec l’assentiment des Etats-Unis. L’Amiral turc affirme que l’Occident et ses alliés arabes ont décidé de réitérer le “scénario du Salvador”, en comptant davantage, pour parachever le travail, sur les groupes terroristes que sur l’opposition politique. Les attentats suicides de Damas le confirment.

 

Il faut se rappeler ici les opérations qui ont visé la déstabilisation du Salvador: elles aussi ont fait appel à des attentats suicides, téléguidés par John Negroponte, devenu par la suite ambassadeur des Etats-Unis en Irak et par Robert Ford, futur ambassadeur américain en Syrie.

 

Peter Oborne, journaliste commentateur du “Daily Telegraph”, confirme que les Etats-Unis et la Grande-Bretagne ont récemment intensifié leur coopération clandestine avec Al-Qaeda, afin de fédérer tous les efforts possibles contre le gouvernement syrien légitime. Dans son article “Syria’s Crisis is Leading Us to Unlikely Bedfellows” (= “La crise syrienne nous amène d’étranges compagnons de lit”), Oborne souligne que les actions terroristes de Damas, commises l’an dernier, présentaient toutes les mêmes signes distinctifs de ceux commis par l’organisation terroriste en Irak. Selon ce journaliste britannique, les militants d’Al-Qaeda sont arrivés en Syrie par la Libye en empruntant le “corridor turc”. Peter Oborne considère que “la triple alliance Washington/Londres/Al-Qaeda” constitue une grave menace pour le Royaume-Uni.

 

Omar al-Bakri, un extrémiste religieux résidant au Liban a confessé dans un entretien au “Daily Telegraph” que les militants d’Al-Qaeda, soutenus par le mouvement al-Mustaqbal de Saad al-Hariri, se sont infiltrés en Syrie via le Liban. Au cours d’une conférence de presse tenue à Benghazi, le ministre des affaires étrangères irakien, Hoshyar Zebari, a confirmé le fait qu’Al-Qaeda s’infiltre en Syrie tout au long de la frontière irakienne dans le but d’aller commettre des attaques terroristes ou de transporter des armes.

 

“The Guardian” a publié récemment un article intitulé “Syria Would Be Disastrous for Its People”; l’auteur, Sami Ramadani, explique qu’une alliance entre les Etats-Unis et Al-Qaeda a pris forme. Les Etats-Unis et la Turquie ont la ferme intention de déstabiliser la Syrie, en utilisant, pour ce faire, les fonds de la rente prétrolière que leur fournissent le Qatar et l’Arabie Saoudite. Tandis que Hillary Clinton cherche à convaincre la communauté internationale que l’intervention en Syrie est une démarche nécessaire, la CIA est impliquée activement dans l’appui logistique à Al-Qaeda et dans l’entraînement des militants djihadistes. C’est désormais bien connu: les Etats-Unis et leurs alliés de l’OTAN ont recruté des chefs d’organisations terroristes et des criminels de droit commun, en provenance de tous les pays du monde, pour en faire des mercenaires et pour les infiltrer en Syrie afin d’y parfaire des opérations spéciales, après les avoir entraînés dans des camps situés en Turquie ou au Liban. Par exemple, à Homs, un membre de la mission d’observation de la Ligue Arabe, qui travaille pour les services spéciaux irakiens, a été fort surpris d’y rencontrer des mercenaires pakistanais, irakiens et afghans. Il fut particulièrement impressionné de constater que certains d’entre eux l’avaient jadis enlever, lui, en Irak. Il est donc important de noter aussi que plus d’une centaine de ces mercenaires en provenance de pays arabes ou autres, dont un nombre significatif de légionnaires français, ont été capturés par les autorités syriennes lorsqu’elles ont repris la ville de Homs.

 

Hala Jaber, un correspondant du “Sunday Times”, est certain, quant à lui, que les extrémistes religieux et les mercenaires étrangers, infiltrés en Syrie depuis les pays limitrophes, ont contribué au déchaînement des violences, afin de mettre un terme aux missions des observateurs internationaux. Hala Jaber a souligné que les appels des cheikhs saoudiens à pénétrer en Syrie ont été suivis par des dizaines de personnes venues du Liban, de Tunisie, d’Algérie, d’Arabie Saoudite, de Libye, d’Egypte, de Jordanie et du Koweit,: elles étaient toutes fanatisées par le désir de créer un califat arabe en Syrie et dans la région.

 

“The British Times” a publié un article, en janvier 2012, qui démontrait que l’Arabie Saoudite et le Qatar étaient liés par un accord secret pour financer l’acquisition d’armements au bénéfice de l’opposition syrienne, afin que celle-ci puisse renverser le régime de Bachar al-Assad. Il existe également un accord secret liant, d’une part, l’Arabie Saoudite et le Qatar, et, d’autre part, l’opposition syrienne; il a été forgé après la réunion des ministres des affaires étrangères des nations de la Ligue Arabe au Caire, en janvier 2012. Un représentant de l’opposition syrienne avait déclaré au quotidien britannique que l’Arabie Saoudite avait offert toute l’assistance souhaitée. Et il avait ajouté que la Turquie, elle aussi, avait pris une part active dans le soutien à l’opposition, en fournissant des armes le long de la frontière turco-syrienne.

 

Mehmet Ali Ediboglu, un député de la province turque de Hatay, a déclaré au journal “National”, un organe publié dans les Emirats Arabes Unis, qu’une grande quantité d’armes d’origine turque se trouvait en Syrie. Ediboglu appartenait à la délégation du “Parti Populaire républicain” turc qui s’était rendue en Syrie en septembre 2011. Des fonctionnaires syriens avaient montré aux membres de cette délégation des photos de camions chargés d’armes qui déchargeaient leur cargaison dans le désert situé dans la zone-tampon entre les “checkpoints” le long de la frontière entre la Turquie et la Syrie. L’entretien du député turc révèle aussi que les armes auraient été commandées et payées par les “Frères Musulmans”.

 

Le site israélien “Debka”, proche des services de renseignement du Mossad, révélait, en août 2011, que l’OTAN avait offert, au départ du territoire turc, des systèmes de défense anti-aériens portables, des armes anti-chars, des lance-granades et des mitrailleuses lourdes aux forces de l’opposition syrienne. Et le site “Debka” ajoutait: “Les rebelles syriens ont reçu un entraînement en Turquie”. L’OTAN et les Etats-Unis ont organisé une campagne pour recruter des milliers de volontaires musulmans, en provenance de divers pays, pour renforcer les rangs des rebelles syriens. L’armée turque a ensuite entraîné ces volontaires et leur a assuré un passage sécurisé à travers la frontière.

 

Selon “The Guardian”, l’Arabie Saoudite est prête à offrir une assistance financière aux militants de l’ “armée syrienne libre”, tout en incitant les militaires de l’armée régulière à la désertion et en augmentant la pression exercée sur le gouvernement d’Al-Assad. Riyad a mis ses plans bien au point avec Washington et les autres Etats arabes. Comme l’ont bien noté les médias britanniques, en faisant référence à des sources anonymes en provenance de trois capitales arabes, l’idée de base ne vient pas des Saoudiens mais plutôt de leurs alliés arabes: ceux-ci, en effet, visent l’élimination de la souveraineté syrienne. L’encouragment à la désertion coïncide avec la fourniture d’armes aux rebelles syriens. “The Guardian” affirme que ses entretiens avec de hauts fonctionnaires de pays arabes lui ont révélé que les fournitures d’armes saoudiennes et qataries, comprenant des fusils automatiques, des lance-grenades et des missiles anti-chars, ont commencé à la mi-mai 2011. Les interlocuteurs arabes du “Guardian” ont expliqué que l’accord final pour envoyer aux rebelles les armes déposées en Turquie a été obtenu à grand peine car Ankara insistait fortement pour que l’opération soit couverte diplomatiquement par les Etats arabes et par les Etats-Unis. Les auteurs de cet article ont également ajouté que la Turquie a autorisé la création d’un centre de commandement à Istanbul, chargé de coordonner les lignes logistiques après consultation avec les chefs de l’ “armée syrienne libre” en Syrie. Des journalistes du “Guardian” ont assisté au transfert des armes dans les premiers jours de juin 2011, dans une localité proche de la frontière turque.

 

Un journal aussi réputé que le “New York Times” a également rapporté que la CIA avait organisé les fournitures en armements et équipements à l’opposition syrienne. D’après les sources du quotidien new-yorkais, des experts au service de la CIA ont travaillé à la distribution illégale de fusils d’assaut, de lanceurs de missiles anti-chars et d’autres types de munitions à l’opposition syrienne. Les armes et les munitions ont été transportées en Syrie notamment avec l’aide des réseaux des “Frères Musulmans” syriens, prétend Eric Schmitt, auteur de l’article. Les fonds destinés à payer ces fusils, ces lance-grenades et ces systèmes blindicides ont été partagés entre la Turquie, l’Arabie Saoudite et le Qatar. Les agents de la CIA ont foruni assistance sur place pour que les cargaisons soient acheminées de leurs dépôts à leurs destinations. Les agents américains ont pu aussi aider les rebelles à organiser un réseau élémentaire de renseignement et de contre-espionnage pour combattre Bachar Al-Assad. Andrea Stone, du “Huffington Post”, confirme cette information.

 

On retiendra le fait que les agents de la CIA ont travaillé à partir de postes situés dans le Sud de la Turquie, dès mars 2011, en conseillant à l’Arabie Saoudite, au Qatar et aux Emirats Arabes Unis quels étaient les éléments de l’ “armée syrienne libre” qu’ils devaient armer. En outre, le vice-président du “Parti trvailliste” turc, Bulent Aslanoglu, a confirmé qu’environ 6000 personnes de nationalités arabes diverses, d’Afghans et de Turcs ont été recrutés par la CIA au départ des Etats-Unis pour commettre des attentats terroristes en Syrie.

 

L’alliance entre les Etats-Unis et Al-Qaeda ne trouble guère une personnalité comme Reuel Marc Gerecht, ancien agent de la CIA et “Senior Follower” auprès de la “Foundation for Defence of Democracies”. Dans les pages du “Wall Street Journal”, Gerecht appuie la nécessité “de mener une opération musclée de la CIA au départ de la Turquie, de la Jordanie et aussi du Kurdistan irakien”. Il pense en outre que l’ “implication limitée” de la CIA contre Al-Assad, portée à la connaissance du public par les médias occidentaux, n’annulera pas en termes concrets les efforts entrepris par ceux qui cherchent à abattre le régime au pouvoir en Syrie. Gerecht insiste surtout sur le fait “qu’Al-Assad, qui dépend de la minorité chiite-alaouite, soit de 10 à 15% de la population syrienne, pour étoffer ses forces militaires, n’aura pas la force de lutter contre l’insurrection si celle-ci se présente sur des fronts multiples”. Cet intellectuel, ancien agent des services et aujourd’hui recyclé dans le bureau d’études de la “Foundation for Defence of Democracies”, pense “qu’une approche coordonnée, téléguidée par la CIA, pour tenter d’envoyer des armes anti-chars, anti-aériennes et anti-personnel à travers les vides sécuritaires des frontières, que le régime ne contrôle pas, ne s’avèrera pas difficile. Le manque d’hommes du régime et la géographie de la Syrie, avec ses montagnes de faible altitude, ses steppes arides et ses déserts malaisés d’accès, rendront le pays probablement très vulnérable aux coups de l’opposition si cette opposition dispose d’une puissance de feu suffisante”. L’ancien agent de la CIA se montre sûr que cette action en Syrie ne constituera pas une entreprise difficile à réaliser: “De même, quand la CIA a renforcé son aide aux forces afghanes anti-soviétiques en 1986-87, les effectifs impliqués (à l’extérieur comme à Washington) étaient infimes, peut-être deux douzaines. Une opération agressive en Syrie nécessitera peut-être plus d’aide en personnel de la CIA que l’opération afghane mais ce seront moins de cinquante officiers américains qui travailleront avec les services alliés”.

 

D’après Gerecht, c’est surtout le premier ministre turc Recep Tayyip Erdogan qui a rompu avec Al-Assad de manière irréversible. La Jordanie, le pays arabe qui bénéficie des rapports les plus étroits avec les Etats-Unis, est aussi hostile à Damas. En outre, le vétéran de la CIA assure que le Kurdistan irakien, toujours plus encadré de fonctionnaires américains sur son propre sol, donnera à la CIA une bonne marge de manoeuvre, Washington ayant promis aux Kurdes son soutien dans tout conflit qui pourrait les opposer à Bagdad ou à Téhéran.

 

Igor Ignatchenko.

(Source: http://www.eurasia-rivista.org , http://sitoaurora.altervista.org/ & http://aurorasito.wordpress.com/ repris sur http://www.ariannaeditrice.it/ en date du 11 eptembre 2012).

 

 

 

Is wiskunde "halal"?

 

Ex: http://www.kennislink.nl/publicaties/is-wiskunde-halal

 

Is wiskunde ‘halal’?

Sinds zowat 400 jaar zijn de exacte wetenschappen voor sommige fundamentalisten in Afrika, het Midden-Oosten en Zuidoost-Azië ‘onrein’. Wat verwijten deze moslims de mathematica, ‘in hemelsnaam’, vraagt wiskundige Dirk Huylebrouck zich af.

Boko Haram, letterlijk: westers onderwijs is een zonde. Het is de naam voor een Nigeriaanse rebellengroep, die vecht tegen het onderwijs in de wiskunde. De sekteleden zijn bang dat kinderen door de invloed van moderne scholen hun islamitische wortels verliezen. Hun leider Mohammed Yusuf pleit voor een religieuze samenleving zonder westerse invloeden: ‘De democratie en het huidige onderwijssysteem moeten veranderen. Anders zal de oorlog, die op het punt staat te beginnen, lang duren.’ Het belangrijkste strijdpunt van ‘Boko Haram’ is een verbod van moderne scholen, die vandaag steeds meer de islamitische scholen vervangen. In die laatste wordt traditioneel onder een boom of in een huisje aan de leerlingen het schrijven aangeleerd en het opdreunen van de Koran, en, op latere leeftijd, de Arabische literatuur en de theologie.

In veel islamitische scholen leren kinderen de Koran opdreunen en krijgen ze geen wiskunde.

Maar Engels, wiskunde en natuurwetenschappen worden niet onderwezen. Verzet tegen lessen biologie wegens soms expliciete seksuele feiten, tegen de dominantie van het Engels ‘van de Amerikaanse vijand’, of tegen geschiedenislessen die de evolutieleer voorstaan, het zou ons nog vertrouwelijk in de oren kunnen klinken. Maar wat ‘in hemelsnaam’ kan de oorzaak zijn van een tegenkanting tegen de wiskunde? Gebruikt de mathematica niet even abstracte patronen als deze die de moskeeën versieren? Duiden de ‘Hindoe-Arabische’ cijfers niet op een duidelijke band tussen de wiskunde en de Arabische wereld? Het woord ‘cijfer’ verwijst trouwens naar het Arabische sifr wat nul betekent. En nog steeds schrijven we bij het uitvoeren van een vermenigvuldiging onze getallen onder elkaar, van rechts naar links, alsof we Arabisch schreven.

In vele scholen in moslimlanden worden de exacte wetenschappen gewoon niet onderwezen. In de meerderheid van Aziatische madrassa’s of Koranscholen wordt geen cijfer geschreven, tenzij het een nummer zou zijn van een deel uit het Heilige Boek. De Arabische universiteiten blinken dan ook niet uit door de aanwezigheid van eersterangs wiskundigen: sinds 400 jaar is er geen enkele Arabische topwiskundige geweest – dit in grote tegenstelling tot bijvoorbeeld de ontelbare joodse namen die de wiskundige erelijsten sieren.

Slechte cijfers

Sinds 2003 oefent de Singaporese overheid grote druk uit op de Koranscholen, omdat de overheid had vastgesteld dat de kennis van niet-religieuze vakken er heel gebrekkig is. Ze eiste dat tegen 2010 de zes Singaporese madrassa’s een vastgesteld basisniveau zouden halen, zoniet zou hen het recht worden ontzegd om onderwijs te organiseren. Enkele scholen kregen een bijzondere ondersteuning van de regering en werden voorzien van de modernste technische snufjes. Hun onderwijsmodel, waarbij de leerlingen de dag weliswaar beginnen met een uitgebreide gebedssessie maar daarna toch wetenschappen en wiskunde studeren, wordt schoorvoetend uitgevoerd naar Indonesië en de Filippijnen.

Het contrasteert echter met de meerderheid van de traditionele Koranscholen in Zuidoost-Azië, waar leerlingen niets anders doen dan de Koran uit het hoofd leren, de hele dag lang. Meestal zijn het teksten geschreven in een voor hen onbegrijpelijke taal, het Arabisch, dat dikwijls niet de moedertaal is, noch de tweede taal.

De Organisatie van de Islamitische Conferentie, een onverdachte bron, berekende dat haar ruim vijftig leden gemiddeld slechts 8,5 wetenschappers, ingenieurs en technici hebben per 1.000 inwoners, waar het gemiddelde op 139,3 ligt voor de landen van de OESO, de Organisatie voor Economische Samenwerking en Ontwikkeling. En er moet worden bij gezegd dat sommige van die ‘wetenschappers’ zich al eens bezighouden met de berekening van de temperatuur van de hel, of met de chemische samenstelling van een djin, een ‘geest’ zoals die uit de lamp van Aladin.

Het aantal wiskundigen onder deze 8,5 wetenschappers is verwaarloosbaar. Ook het aantal wetenschappelijke publicaties bevestigt deze schrijnende toestand: zesenveertig moslimlanden samen leveren slechts 1,17% van de publicaties, en twintig Arabische landen samen 0,55%. De Amerikaanse ‘National Science Foundation’ stelde vast dat de helft van de 28 laagst scorende landen op het gebied van wetenschappelijke artikelen behoren tot de Organisatie van de Islamitische Conferentie. Toch is het moeilijk voor te stellen dat Arabische universiteiten met ronkende namen als ‘King Faisal University’ of ‘Prince Sultan University’ te klagen zouden hebben over een gebrek aan financiële middelen.

Een groots verleden

Toch waren het moslimgeleerden die de wiskundige wereld gedurende bijna 700 jaar domineerden. In de 8ste eeuw was er Musa al-Khwarizmi die in zijn ‘Huis der Wijsheid’ in Bagdad niet alleen sterrenkundige tafels opstelde maar ook het oudste leerboek in de rekenkunde, dat in zijn Latijnse vertaling tot in de 16de eeuw zou worden gebruikt, ook in Europa. De verbastering van zijn naam leidde trouwens tot ons woord ‘algoritme’.

Rond ‘onze’ millenniumwisseling was er Al Beruni die in wat nu Oezbekistan heet vele boeken schreef, waaronder een vijftiental over de wiskunde. Sommen van reeksen, algebraïsche vergelijkingen en de verdere ontwikkeling van stellingen van Archimedes: ze trokken allemaal zijn aandacht. De 11de eeuw kende de wellicht grootste wiskundige, dichter en filosoof uit het hele Midden-Oosten, de Pers Omar Khayyam. Hij besefte dat verhoudingen in geometrische figuren niet noodzakelijk tot getallen leiden die steeds als breuken kunnen worden geschreven. Hij had ook het idee om algebra (nog een woord met een Arabische etymologie) en meetkunde te combineren, ten einde vergelijkingen van de vorm x³ + px² + qx + r = 0 op te lossen. Een tijdgenoot van hem was de eerste om het parallellenpostulaat van Euclides in twijfel te trekken, lang voor Nikolaj Lobatsjevski (Rusland) of Janos Bolyai (Hongarije) dit deden in de 19de eeuw. Het postulaat stelt het nochtans intuïtief voor de hand liggende feit dat door elk punt precies één evenwijdige gaat aan een gegeven rechte.

Een pagina uit een Latijnse editie van Euclides’ Elementen uit de 14de eeuw. Onderaan de pagina het beroemde parallellenpostulaat.

Een wiskundige ‘Prince of Persia’ was Ulugh-Beg (ca. 1393-1449), een kleinzoon van Ti-moer Lenk (1336-1405), die eerst gouverneur was in Samarkand en daarna de vorst van het gehele rijk. Hij zou een groot belang hechten aan de wetenschap en een enorme astronomische sterrenwacht laten bouwen. Onder zijn bewind werden Koranscholen een soort islamitische academies, waar ook wiskunde en sterrenkunde hoog in het vaandel werden gedragen. Tussen 1408 en 1437 werkten er zowat 70 sterrenkundigen, onder wie Al-Kashi (1380-1429). Al was de astronomie er het belangrijkste studiegebied, toch zou deze laatste bijvoorbeeld ook de decimalen van pi berekenen aan de hand van een 8.050.306.368-zijdig veelvlak. Zijn waarde was pi was 3,141 592 653 589 793 25, wat juist is tot op de 16 decimaal (de 17de moet 4 zijn, niet 5). Zijn ‘totaal nutteloze’ wereldrecord zou stand houden tot 1596 toen de Nederlander Ludolph van Ceulen er 20 berekende.

Al-Kashi berekende ook de sinus van 1° met een grote nauwkeurigheid, en dit 200 jaar voor Kepler. In 1449 werd Ulugh-Beg echter vermoord op zijn weg naar Mekka, door fundamentalisten geleid door zijn eigen zoon. Misschien konden de hovelingen het niet langer dulden dat hij meer aandacht had voor wetenschappelijke dan voor wereldse zaken, en met zijn dood kwam ook een einde aan de wetenschappelijke activiteiten in Samarkand.

Ulugh-Beg omringd door zijn astronomen. Onder zijn bewind werden Koranscholen een soort islamitische academies, waar wiskunde en sterrenkunde hoog in het vaandel werden gedragen.

Wiskunde wordt zinloos

Ulugh-Begs wiskundige activiteiten bleken de laatste oprisping van de islamitische wiskunde. Tegen het einde van de 15de eeuw zou de invloed van Shaykh Ahmad Sirhindi (1564-1624) verreikende gevolgen hebben. Deze geleerde uit Punjab beschouwde de wiskundigen als ‘idioten’ en hun bewonderaars als ‘nog ergere idioten en de ergste schepsels’. In zijn Maktubat I/266 schreef hij dat de wiskunde ‘totaal zinloos en absoluut nutteloos’ is. De wiskunde kon de mens immers niet van dienst zijn in zijn redding op weg naar het hiernamaals. Het volstond volgens hem om voldoende te kunnen rekenen om de verdeling van een erfenis te bepalen en om de richting te vinden waarin moet worden gebeden.

Sindsdien overheerst deze zienswijze ook bij de ‘Ulama’, de geleerden die de visie van de islam en de sharia bestuderen, met officiële goedkeuring. Opmerkelijk is dat Europa bijna op dat zelfde moment een einde maakte aan zijn lange traditie van neerkijken op de wiskunde. Weliswaar kwam Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) toen nog in moeilijkheden voor zijn wetenschappelijke vindingen, maar ongeveer vanaf ditzelfde tijdperk ontdeed West-Europa zich stilaan van het juk van het religieuze obscurantisme. Sinds de heilige Augustinus hadden vele christenen de wetenschap-om-de-wetenschap afgewezen, in een laatantieke traditie, en achtten ze de studie van de wiskunde alleen zinvol voor zover ze kon bijdragen aan ‘het waarachtige geluk’. Lange tijd werden de negatieve getallen door de katholieke kerk als des duivels beschouwd, waardoor alleen een enkele paus in zijn kamer wel aan wiskunde mocht doen, maar liefst niet de gewone christen.

In het Westen veranderden de tijden echter wel, en uiteindelijk zouden bijvoorbeeld de scholen van de jezuïeten de wiskunde zelfs zeer hoog in het vaandel dragen. Het is alsof rond 1600 het Westen en het Midden-Oosten elkaar kruisten: ze sloegen tegenovergestelde wegen in, vanuit tegenovergestelde vertrekpunten.

Volgens prof. Reza Sarhangi biedt de wetenschap jongeren uit Iran de mogelijkheid om de godsdienstige bekrompenheid te overstijgen en een internationale carrière uit te bouwen.

Olympiades

Maar het is niet allemaal kommer en kwel. De statistieken, zoals de al aangehaalde OESO-rapporten, zijn voor interpretatie vatbaar. De cijfers van de Wiskundeolympiade, een soort ‘wiskundige Olympische Spelen’, geven een volledig ander beeld. Zo staat het Iraanse team gemiddeld op de 10,9de plaats gedurende het laatste decennium, en nog twee jaar verder terug in de tijd, in 1998, stond het Iraanse team zowaar op de eerste plaats. Turkije bekleedt gemiddeld een 15,6de plaats, ver voor Israël dat slechts een gemiddelde 26ste plaats haalt, en dit in weerwil tot de uitzonderlijke palmares van de Joodse wiskundigen. Ter vergelijking, het Belgische team stond in dezelfde tijdsspanne gemiddeld op de 48,6ste plaats, en Nederland op de 52,4ste plaats. Dit is maar een paar plaatsen hoger dan bijvoorbeeld Marokko. Misschien halen bepaalde westerse landen juist een goed palmares in de ‘Quotation Index’ en andere statistische middelen om de belangrijkheid van onderzoek te meten, omdat moslim wiskundegenieën die op jeugdige leeftijd aan de Olympiade deelnamen, daarna in hun landen gaan werken. De geciteerde Amerikaanse ‘National Science Foundation’ zou ontgoocheld kunnen zijn wanneer ze zou natellen hoeveel in de VS geboren en getogen wetenschappers er het mooie weer maken aan de Amerikaanse wiskundedepartementen.

Wiskunde is bovendien een minder opvallende zonde tegen het halal-beginsel dan het niet dragen van een hoofddoek, het eten van een stuk varkensvlees of het drinken van wijn. Daarom is het verzet tegen de wiskunde van Nigeriaanse islamisten, Aziatische madrassa’s en westerse hardlinermoslims wellicht slechts een achterhoedegevecht, althans volgens Reza Sarhangi, hoogleraar aan het departement Wiskunde van de Towson University (VS). Deze Iraniër organiseert het congressencircuit ‘Bridges: Mathematical Connections in Art, Music, and Science’ en houdt graag voordrachten over ‘islamitische wiskunde’. Bij een glas wijn, waarvan hij fier vertelt dat het Perzië was dat de ‘godendrank’ uitvond, kan hij niet stoppen met het vermelden van redenen waarom ‘wiskunde mooi is’. Voorwaar een statement dat niet erg ‘halal’ is, maar hij stoort er zich niet aan: ‘Zelfs in de Islamistische Republiek zijn de wetenschappen van vandaag te belangrijk geworden, en niemand krijgt de wiskundige geest terug in de wonderlamp.’ Ook niet in die van Aladin.