The great thing about "al-Qaeda" is that they are the terrorist group that has something to offer for anyone who needs a patsy to fulfill a task, whether that be to cover a political assassination of an annoying individual, a military incursion into an innocent country, the suppression of national civil rights, or even the use of martial law tactics against unarmed citizens.  For Muammar Qaddafi, "al-Qaeda" has been the shock troops of the Libyan revolution.  For post-Soviet Russia, "al-Qaeda" was the militant nationalist terrorists who were fomenting an insurgency, at one point even creating a terrorist "mini-state" in the Pankisi Gorge.  For post-Soviet Georgia, this meant accepting American largesse along with the new American-directed paradigm, where Russia gets American support (and therefore Georgian) for cleaning-out a Chechen militant base in Georgia, while Russia accepts the setting-up of the Partnership for Peace Program in Georgia, as a precursor to implementing the program in all former Soviet states, under the guise of training national forces to fight alongside US/NATO troops, against AQ terror or drug-running.  This was an underhanded way for NATO to gain working control over host country forces, which worked especially well, whenever the terror threat was really hyped-up.

The really tricky part in unraveling these Western psyops like "al-Qaeda," is in learning how to tell the difference between the "direct action" missions and the actual militant terrorism which has been generated in reaction.  It is a complex formula, developed over many decades by spook mind-fuckers, working in multiple zones of chaos.  If we want to understand it we need to understand just how far that American military forces are authorized to go in pursuit of these hidden objectives. Our American "heroes" that everyone wants you to support are fully prepared to commit attacks which can only be described as terrorism to "preserve our way of life."

We see it clearly spelled-out in some military training manuals, such as in the US Army’s classified Field Manual 30-31:

classified Field Manual 30-31, with appendices FM 30-31A and FM 30-31B, authored by the Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) to train thousands of stay-behind officers around the world. The field manual was published in the 1987 parliamentary report of the Italian parliamentary investigation into the terrorist activities of "P2", the CIA-MI6 sponsored Italian anti-communist network. As Ganser observes: "FM 30-31 instructs the secret soldiers to carry out acts of violence in times of peace and then blame them on the Communist enemy in order to create a situation of fear and alertness. Alternatively, the secret soldiers are instructed to infiltrate the left-wing movements and then urge them to use violence." In the manual’s own words:

"There may be times when Host Country Governments show passivity or indecision in the face of Communist subversion andaccording to the interpretation of the US secret services do not react with sufficient effectiveness… US army intelligence must have the means of launching special operations which will convince Host Country Governments and public opinion of the reality of the insurgent danger. To reach this aim US army intelligence should seek to penetrate the insurgency by means of agents on special assignment, with the task of forming special action groups among the most radical elements of the insurgency… In case it has not been possible to successfully infiltrate such agents into the leadership of the rebels it can be useful to instrumentalise extreme leftist organizations for one’s own ends in order to achieve the above described targets… These special operations must remain strictly secret. Only those persons which are acting against the revolutionary uprising shall know of the involvement of the US Army…" (p. 234-297)

The military anticipates where they want to project power, then they begin "enabling operations," intended to shape the local environment and bring about conditions conducive to their objective.  If they want to take over a local ongoing insurgency, they activate the most radical criminal elements within the groups to stage local terror attacks, or if no insurgency exists in the targeted country, then covert Western paramilitary forces would disguise their appearances and assimilate "in country," where they would serve as their own radicalizing, criminal terrorist element.

I  have been focusing mainly on this type penetration of Pakistan for several years, but I have come to think that perhaps I needed to investigate the American "Islamists" in Chechnya.  In Chechnya, we clearly smell the American hand all over synthetic terrorist leader "Doku Umarov," but the stinking trail that ends in Doku runs all the way back to Afghanistan, establishing an improbable link to bin Laden himself, legitimizing the brand "al-Qaeda" that the Russians and Americans have attached to anything associated with the martyred Chechen (Saudi) leader "Emir Khattab."

The story of Ibn-ul-Khattab mirrors the real-life stories of so many other key jihadi terrorists and former "mujahedeen," telling a story of an American/Saudi/Pakistani "sifting" (psychological profiling) operation in post-Soviet Afghanistan and the Middle East, looking for candidates for advanced military training and indoctrination in radical Islam. Khattab, like his Chechen militant partner

Rizvan Chitigov (aka the Marine, the American, Chemist) had been chosen after the Jihad to enter a secret training program.  Khattab was recruited by Aramco (Saudi State Oil Corp.) profilers, Chitigov was chosen by an "al-Qaeda" front "Islamic charity" group, to go to the US to enter Navy Special Forces training, possibly Navy Seals.

In Egypt, Ali Mohammad was selected from the same Special Forces unit which also killed Anwar Sadat, to go to Special Forces training at Ft. Bragg.

Haji Namdar was taken by a religious scout from Khyber Agency in Pakistan, and sent to Saudi Arabia for ten years of indoctrination before returning home to Pakistan, where he staged Sharia attacks upon locals and ignited a wave of sectarian violence, the same wave which Hakeemullah Mehsud rode to prominence in Kurram Agency.  Every outstanding militant "Islamist" leader should be stamped "made in America."

As unbelievable as it all seems, the US and its allies have been waging this secret war for a very long time, planning for the day when they would activate all their little Frankenstein’s against the civilized world.  They see all Americans as the ultimate enemy of the secret American government.  Our government, in collusion with multiple other governments, have been quietly creating the elements that would one day be needed to produce their realistic illusion of an international terrorist network, living and breathing hatred for America.  We needed our monsters to frighten us in the night.

The military has never captured an actual card-carrying member of "al-Qaeda," or charged anyone from the group for 911 (not even bin Laden), is because that there is no AQ.  The reason why no one has ever produced an "al-Qaeda" document is because the only ones in existence were manufactured by people like Adam Yehiye Gadahn, a nice Jewish boy who calls himself "Azzam al-Amriki."

It has become fashionable as of late, to speak of "al-Qaeda" as a fake or imaginary organization, dreamed-up by Bush and Cheney (possibly with the help of Bill Clinton), to inflate the small outfit which was behind the martyrdom operations on 911, into an international enemy substantial enough to warrant the use of all US military power in their pursuit.  Before there was an "al-Qaeda," there was already a plan to use America’s army of mujahedeen as key elements of America’s new super-secret foreign policy.

"Al-Qaeda" is not bin Laden’s creation; it is a collection of stories about actual terrorists and the attacks which they have actually carried-out (some of whom were agents of various intelligence agencies).  Even "synthetic terror" (a phrase coined by Webster Tarpley) needs a few real terrorists, around which to build the myth.  For the US to construct a believable concept of an international terror network, it needed news reports, which laid-out multiple radial trails, from a central source, with bin Laden at its center.  In order to follow its standard M.O. for running a "public diplomacy" type of psyop, like the pattern set supporting the Contra network by Ollie North and friends, popular news reporting had to have spectacular terrorist attacks to feed the propaganda machine.

Some of the more famous terrorist actors were murderous psychopaths like Ramzi Yousef, Sheikh Khalid Mohammad, Abu Musad al-Zarqawi, Ibn ul-Khattak and Tahir Yuldashev, to name but a few.  "Al-Qaeda" was as real as the men whose exploits were reported, as well as the legends which grew-up around them.   The myth was built around the concept of creating the impression that these madmen were all part of one organic international organization.  Select, credible reporters were fed obscure reports about attacks which these guys had been connected with, creating a single, flowing false narrative about the "international" forces at work.  By tying all the individual players at some point in their lives to bin Laden, it became possible to imagine both the "international terror network," and its boss, sitting at the center, like a powerful mob capo.  People like Khattab and Zarqawi were claimed to be part of bin Laden’s group, because their paths had allegedly crossed once in the past.

This convincing narrative had to maintain its cohesion under close scrutiny from a prying audience, which was armed with all the resources on the Internet, to be used in deconstructing the Imperial narrative, even though this required the stitching together of multiple, diverse, culturally and nationally oriented terror groups into one blanket organization.  Uzbeks, Turkish Kurds, Chechens, Hezbollah, MEK, Islamic Jihad…a wide assortment of groups had to fit the mold that the storytellers were creating out of thin air.

This is the greatest weakness of the Imperial plan, the impossibility of holding the big lie together by the continual suppression of evidence which demonstrates American material support in the past of the very terrorists it claimed to be at war against.  US dominance over the world wide web which it has created and given to the people of the world to use, allows the continual monitoring of Internet content, to prevent the posting of such evidence where the public might be exposed to proof of guilt.  This is the reason behind the common practice of "disappearing" documents, whenever explosive evidence hits the net.  This is why I maintain the practice of posting whole documents on my site, whenever I find potentially explosive material.

The censorship is too efficient, meaning that it is highly unlikely that we will ever come across a real "smoking gun" type of document which spells-out American support for terrorism.  What we will find, however, are commonly referred to as "gems" of wisdom, which reveal a small piece of the puzzle.  Our task must be to assemble as many of these gems as we can into single documents, which trace the Imperial support for individual terrorists, like al-Zarqawi, or Khattab.

The American terror war and the Russian war on "Islamists" and nationalists seem to have dovetailed into one war in Chechnya, even though the two sides nearly collided later, over the failed Georgian war to push-out the Russians.  It is a very strange arrangement which has been struck in the N. Caucasus by Bush and Putin.  In order to gain Putin’s support in the terror war, which was rapidly losing momentum, especially in regards to the planned invasion of Iraq, Bush allowed Putin to "buy-in" to the narrative, painting his war on Grozny and his moves against rebel hideouts in the Pankisi Gorge in Georgia as part of the war against "al-Qaeda."  They claimed that a substantial force of Arab-Chechen fighters under the command of Khattab and Abu Musab al-Zarqawi were holed-up in Pankisi Gorge.  Putin came-out against the Taliban and Bush publicly condemned "al-Qaeda" moves in the N. Caucasus.

The Bush team quickly jumped upon the Al-Q in Caucasus bandwagon, sending Colin Powell to the UN, seeking authorization to pulverize Iraq, under the pretense of exposing Al-Q chemical weapons factories in Pankisi and Baghdad, all run by al-Zawahiri and his gang.  There were many holes in this chain of lies, most of them centered upon the elusive Zawahiri.  One of the holes was revealed in an interview with Ibn-ul-Khattab on an Islamist website in 1999, before 911, or anything that followed:

"In those operations, the Vice Military Commander, Hakeem Al-Madani, was martyred as well as Sheikh Abu Musab (Arabian Peninsula)."

Abu Musad al-Zarqawi was killed in the Chechen invasion of Dagestan.  Some fact-checker at NSA or CIA obviously missed that one.  Everything attributed to al-Zarqawi after that point was either the work of a double or an outright fabrication.  We have the word of a solemn comrade who was there with Zarqawi at the end.

Zarqawi was a strange character.  He was half Chechen, part of a Chechen diaspora in Zarqa, Jordan, near the Saudi border.  Ibn-ul-Khattab was also half Chechen, also from near Zarqa, in the Saudi town of Arar, near the Iraqi border.  Zarqawi was a criminal and a thug, who received his religious indoctrination while inside the Jordanian prison system.  Upon his release in 1999, he went to straight to Chechnya for jihad.  There is no evidence that he went to Chechnya via Pakistan.

Jordan’s King Abdullah II once referred to Zarqawi as a "street thug," adding that the media had inflated Zarqawi’s intelligence and skills to create a larger threat.

Jamestown Foundation report on Zarqawi and the ricin scare makes the following point:

"Abu Musab al-Zarqawi remains central to the disinformation campaigns that obscure our understanding of Islamist terrorism."– Andrew McGregor is the director of Aberfoyle International Security Analysis in Toronto, Canada.  Ricin Fever: Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in the Pankisi Gorge

Whoever played the role of Zarqawi, after that, focused on starting an anti-Shia sectarian civil wars, first in Iraq, then the entire region.  Zarqawi was not a military leader before he allegedly died, neither was he an expert in poisons.  He was a bully, a poor student and a thug.  The role of Zarqawi was clearly played by two different people.

The alternative narrative, which enables the creation of the myth of al-Zarqawi, holds that he tried to get to Chechnya via Pakistan.  Some of these reports claim that he was side-lined from Chechnya after getting arrested in Pakistan.  The Khattab version, given in the 1999 interview, must be the truth, because Khattab apparently had nothing to gain by claiming another militant leader’s death.  If it was the beginning of an A-Q psyop, then what was there for anyone to gain by tarnishing a militant’s rep?

In 1999, there was no Pres. G.W. Bush.  The US and Russia were still on different sides of the great divide.  The two parties could not have been planning together for a major psyop for a war that did not yet exist, or for a second Chechen war.  Putin was not even in control yet.  The stretch comes in trying to fit the Bush version of "al-Qaeda" with the Putin version, making the Chechen Islamists and "al-Qaeda in Iraq" seem like the same outfit, fighting towards the same goals.  If A-Q is really the enemy of the US and the Russians are also fighting A-Q in Chechnya, how does US support for anti-Russian Chechen Islamists NOT equal an American attack upon Russia, or even US support for A-Q?

America’s use of "Islamists" to go up against Russian forces has been consistent since the middle 70s.  American support for "Islamist" terrorism against Russian forces in N. Caucasus, as in many other places, is fronted by Saudis.  The US, the Saudis, the Brits, the Germans, and the Iranians all supported the Chechen "Islamists," just as they supported all anti-Russian militant "Islamists" in the former Yugoslavia.  None of that had changed, just because Putin and Bush drove around Texas in a golf cart.

What flowed from the scheme hatched by those two was a river of pure bullshit.  It has not stopped flowing since.  We are about up to our necks in it now.  By Bush agreeing to go along with Putin’s plan to label the Chechens in the Pankisi Gorge as "al-Qaeda" it made it possible to join with Russia in our war against Russia, just as it has been to join with Pakistan in our war against Pakistan, and so on.

The "Obama/Russian reset" is more of the same deal, possibly sweetened by Obama’s promise to back-off pressuring Putin over Ukraine, or the pipeline wars, for a promise of giving Russia a say in what happens in Afghanistan and possibly in Pakistan.  While the US and Russia have squabbled over the pipeline wars, China has slipped in the backdoor and gobbled-up most of the product which has become available.  It will be interesting to see whether the US/Russian front against China will survive continued American "low-intensity warfare" in Russia and the Caucasus long enough to stand-up to Chinese expansion.

American support for anti-Russian "Islamists" has been very real and verifiable.  What is not verifiable is speculation about KGB complicity in CIA adventurism in Central Asia, whether it was a widespread pattern of collusion, or just the work of a few very effective Kremlin moles or "rogues," who have provided key information and contacts needed for the CIA co-opting of key "Islamist" leaders, even those spawned by the KGB or Soviet military intelligence.  A case in point, Tahir Yuldashev, co-founder of the notorious Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU).  IMU co-founder Juma Namangani was Russian Special Forces who had operated in his native Uzbekistan as an underground "Islamist" commando force, seeking to undermine the Uzbek govt’s meddling in "Islamism" to quell anti-govt dissent.  The US "al-CIAda" has clearly co-opted the IMU for its own purposes since then.

There was speculation in the press about the causes of the Second Chechen war, about whether "Islamist" Chechen leaders had been paid-off by either Putin or the oligarchs, into instigating that conflict.  Number one Chechen military leader, Shamil Basayev, claimed that he took several million from Russian oligarch Berezovsky to start the second Chechen war, which would bring Putin to power, through alleged false flag bombings in Moscow and an invasion of Dagestan.

In Chechnya, as in so many terror war locales, there was a terror war, but it was being waged against Russians, not Americans.  A common link between America and Russia had to be established, one far stronger than just a common desire to avoid living under global Sharia law.  A common link had to be established, without revealing the American hand in the creation and funding of the original Chechen War combatants, for this purpose, "al-Qaeda" proxies had to be found, to serve as a buffer between East and West, meaning A-Q had to have had operations which targeted both sides.  This was manufactured in the Pankisi Gorge, in a fake country the Russians called Abkhazia.

In its efforts to lobby the American side into embracing the anti-Chechen fight, the Kremlin made all kinds of claims about hundreds of Arab fighters, training camps, even chemical weapons laboratories.  In their zeal, they revealed the names of a few well-known terrorist thugs, like Abu Musad, the Jordanian, linking him to Khattab.  When the Americans signed-on to the speculation about A-Q in the Caucasus, it became part of the hard-sell on Iraq.  Everybody overplayed their hands, just enough to get sloppy.  In the merger of Eastern and Western propaganda on this issue, the CIA obviously figured that the Russian side would be just as circumspect as they had been in scrubbing documents from the Internet which revealed facts that they wanted kept hidden.  The interview with Khattab was obviously one of them.  Russian documents will one day reveal solid proof of the American hand in the creation of the Chechen network.

peterchamberlin@naharhet.com