Al Qaeda and the "Strategy of Tension"

[reprehensor]

In Dec. 2005, Nafeez Ahmed gave a short speech at the Perdana Global Peace Forum about the hidden relationship between Western Intel and "international terrorism". These four paragraphs are from his abstract, and the full speech is posted on my blog, linked below. -r.

State Terrorism and the Covert Operations Apparatus
http://www.perdana4peace.org/materials.html

by Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

The history of international terrorism is one of state-covert operations. During the
Cold War, the CIA and MI6 used NATO to jointly establish a secret network of staybehind
armies across Western Europe. The modus operandi of this network was the
execution of terrorist attacks within the West that were subsequently blamed
domestically on Communist and leftist parties, and internationally on the Soviet
Union, justifying the mass militarization of entire Western societies. The policy was
known as the “Strategy of Tension”, and was mobilized when public support for
military interventionism was flagging.

....

With the collapse of the Soviet Union, new forms of threat projection were necessary,
eventually solidifying in the form of “al-Qaeda”. Al-Qaeda is conventionally
portrayed as a monolithic, hierarchical organization whose activities -- coordinated by
the network’s leader Osama bin Laden -- are the source of international terrorism
today. Al-Qaeda is considered a radical tendency within the broader Islamist Salafi
movement, legitimizing its terrorist operations as a global Islamist jihad against
Western civilization. Al-Qaeda’s terrorist activity today is considered “blowback”
from long finished CIA and western covert operations in Afghanistan.

The conventional wisdom is demonstrably false. After the Cold War, Western
connections with al-Qaeda proliferated around the world, challenging mainstream
conceptions of al-Qaeda’s identity. The “Strategy of Tension” has continued, this time
with a new projected enemy. Western covert operations and military-intelligence
connections in strategic regions show that “al-Qaeda” is a network whose raison
d’etre and modus operandi are inextricably embedded in a disturbing conglomerate of
international Western diplomatic, financial, military and intelligence policies today.
US, British and Western power routinely manipulates al-Qaeda through a complex
network of state-regional and human nodes. Such manipulation extended directly to
the 9-11 hijackers, and thus to the events of 9-11 itself.

This fundamentally challenges the entire paradigm of the “War on Terror”, and
reveals the reality of a “constructed conflict” designed to serve the vested interests of
power premised on control of oil and gas resources, and to consolidate an increasingly
unstable and unsustainable global system.

More:

Subverting "Terrorism"
http://www.gnn.tv/B12624

Al Qaeda and the US Establishment
http://www.gnn.tv/B10211

[Warren Stupidity]

1. Sounds about right.

Difficult as hell to prove, but it sure explains a whole lot of recent history.