TMR
180: Adeyinka Makinde: The Pan-Islamic Option (Part One: Recent Years)
PART
1
The
first part of a wide-ranging interview with Julian Charles of The Mind Renewed
about my essay, “The Pan-Islamic Option: The West’s Part in the Creation and
Sustaining of Islamist Terror”. This segment focused in recent policies
followed by the West through which weaponised Islam is used as a tool in
seeking geo-political advantage. But this has come with huge moral, financial
and security costs.
Julian
Charles: Hello everybody! Julian Charles here of The Mind Renewed dot Com coming to you as usual from
the depths of the Lancashire countryside here in the UK, and today I’m
delighted to welcome back to the programme the lawyer and university lecturer
Adeyinka Makinde, who joined us last year to discuss his academic article, “Can
the British State Convict Itself?” Adeyinka trained for the law as a barrister
and lectures in criminal law and public law at a university in London, and has
research interests in intelligence and security matters. He is regularly
published online writing on international relations, politics and military
history, and has served as a program consultant and provided expert commentary
for BBC World Service Radio, China Radio International and the Voice of Russia.
Adeyinka, thank you very much for coming back on the programme.
Adeyinka
Makinde: Thank you; it’s a pleasure Julian.
JC:
Well,
it’s great to have you on for a second time; I’m glad that I didn’t put you off
the first time. Well, this time we’re going to be talking about the subject of
one of your recent articles on your blog, and indeed published at
globalresearch.ca. I’ll just mention your blog while we’re in passing
–Adeyinkamakinde.blogspot.co.uk – and the article which caught my eye you
called “The Pan-Islamic Option : The West’s Part in the Creation and
Development of Islamist Terrorism”, which
is obviously a very disturbing subject, but one that I’m sure the majority of people
listening to this program will have some familiarity with given the coverage of
themes like this in the Alt Media in general, and, indeed, our previous
conversations with Dr. Paul Craig Roberts and, of course, James Corbett, who
talked to us about the rise of ISIS a couple of years back, and perhaps I
should also mention, because I was very pleased with this particular
conversation, Dr. Daniele Ganser on Operation Gladio. So I do recommend people do
go and check that out, because I’m quite sure that Gladio will come up in this
conversation. What struck me about your article, Adeyinka, is that it is
extremely helpful in pointing out with many, many examples just how long this
problem – the West’s cultivation of Islamist terror for various geopolitical
purposes– has been going on. So, before we get onto the detail of this, perhaps
you could tell us what your motivation was for penning an article like this?
AM: Well,
the immediate motivation was discovering a meme, which had been circulating on
social media, declaring Obama, the “Muslim President”, as being responsible for
ISIS and that Hilary Clinton is the “godmother” of ISIS, and I thought I doubt
very much that Mr. Obama is a Muslim, but I can see it’s part of this
ideological and cultural warfare in America where people seek to blame each
party for the ills associated with the American Republic in contemporary times, but how narrow it is. People should
know better given the access to media they have to show that this was more of a
long-standing issue, an over-arching issue, which transcends the politician who
holds power of the day. It may also be a deep state issue, and also it was
really an accumulation of writings I had been doing for some time.
JC: Yes,
as you say there is this polarization of opinion in the media and in the public
as to whether the Right is to blame for what’s going on in the world today or
the Left is to blame, and as you mention in the article a lot of debate about
the nature of Islam itself, and you write in the article: “While each aspect of
these debates are important in their own right, the compartmentalized nature of
the discourse arguably serves as a useful device which distracts the public
from grasping the broader picture.” And
I’m putting together your mention a moment ago of this phrase “the deep state”
with the word that you use:”device”. Do you see this compartmentalization that
we see in public discourse on these matters as a deliberate device by the deep
state to divert people’s attention away from the real nature of these problems?
AM:
Oh,
I think it does serve that purpose and it’s possibly, very possibly an intended
device. Certainly, whether migrants of Islamic persuasion from the Middle East are
assimilable into Western Society is a genuine issue, maybe a sensitive one, but
a genuine one nevertheless. We can, as we are mature people, separate the
discourse of the rank racist from those who are interested in the whole economics
of the matter about absorbing large amounts of immigrants or of cultural defence
even, but the sad fact is that that aspect of the discourse succeeds in
obfuscating the root cause of this wave of migrants on two levels, whether
you’re talking about economic migrants, who are not affected by wars in the
Middle East, or those who are affected by the wars in the Middle East, and the
obfuscation is that the West has been involved in a prolonged policy of using Islamist
militias to overthrow governments in the Middle East. So the West is
responsible for wrecking whole nations and enabling the displacement of whole
groups of people, and the idea is that if you in America and the United Kingdom
and the rest of Western Europe can just focus on that problem that has been
prevailing for some time, you will sort out these issues related to economic
migration and other displaced persons seeking refuge in the EU. Stop bombing
these lands, stop overthrowing governments and overturning societies. Therein
we shall find some measure of a solution.
JC: So
the two things you want people to be aware of is this long history of Western
support for militant Islamic groups, and also to question very seriously when
we hear of terrorists having been monitored by intelligence agencies, and you
helpfully delve back into history in the West to find many examples that give
us a broader picture of all this, and we’ll come to some of that history in a
bit, but first let’s pause to consider some of the indications in more recent
times of Western support for Islamist terror groups, or at least support by
allies of the West, we’ll talk about to what extent each one of those applies:
direct Western support and/or support by allies of the West. Let’s talk around
that for a moment. You mention quite well known facts, but I think it’s important
never to forget these facts, so they’re very much worth repeating. Remarks by
former US Vice-President Joe Biden speaking at Harvard in 2014 and the words of
General Wesley Clark interviewed on CNN in 2015. Now in a moment I’m going to
be asking you for your reaction to those comments, but let’s just refresh
people’s memories about those remarks by playing back a couple of clips, and in
fact I’m going to be including quite a few clips during the course of this
interview because I think it’s a good idea to have the words fresh in our minds
while they’re being discussed, so the first clip here is of Joe Biden speaking
at Harvard on October 2nd, 2014, and the second clip is of General Wesley
Clark, who is a 4-Star US General and former Supreme Allied Commander Europe of
NATO from 1997 to 2000, and he’s being interviewed on CNN in February 2015.
Joe
Biden: What my constant cry was that our biggest problem was
our allies. Our allies in the region were our largest problem in Syria. The
Turks are our great friends, and I have a great relationship with Erdogan who
I’ve just spent a lot of time with, the Saudis, the Emiratis et cetera. What
were they doing? They were so determined to take down Assad and essentially
have a proxy Sunni-Shia war, what did they do? They poured hundreds of millions
of dollars and thousands of tons of weapons into anyone who would fight against
Assad, except that the people who were being supplied were al-Nusra and al-Qaeda
and the extremist elements of Jihadis coming from other parts of the world. Now,
if you think I’m exaggerating, take a look. Where did all of this go? So now
what’s happening all of a sudden everybody is awakened because this outfit
called ISIL, which was al-Qaeda in Iraq, which when they were essentially
thrown out of Iraq, found open space and territory in eastern Syria, worked
with al-Nusra, who we declared a terrorist group early on, and we could not
convince our colleagues to stop supplying them.
Wesley
Clark: Look, it just got started through funding from our
friends and allies because, as people will tell you in the region, if you want
somebody who’ll fight to the death against Hezbollah you don’t put out a
recruiting post or say sign up for us, we’re going to make a better world, you
go after zealots and you go after these religious fundamentalists – that’s who
fights Hezbollah – it’s like a Frankenstein.
JC: OK,
so having listened to those again, what do you say they reveal? What do they
tell us?
AM: Well,
I think they tell us that there is an underlying policy, which is consistent regardless
of who is in power. We’ll go back into the history in a moment, but in the
recent history, say in the Cold War era, a policy that’s been consistent from
the time of Bill Clinton, definitely from the George Bush era, and although
Barak Obama was pledging to make a break with the past, he essentially
continued those policies intact. Now, we really see those policies still
continuing under Donald Trump. That does suggest there is an agenda that
appears to be played out regardless of ideology, regardless of politics, and it
does also have serious investigative journalistic confirmation. It also has
serious academic research backing. There was a paper just a few years ago,
which was turned into a small book called National
Security and Double Government by an academic from Tufts University (named)
Michael J. Glennon, and he was borrowing the phrase ‘Double Government’ from
the famous British Constitutionalist from the 19th century Walter
Bagehot, who spoke about effectively a parallel government, a government of
self-interested civil servants and power interests, who control an agenda
regardless of who is in power, and so what Michael J. Glennon did was to
compare the policies of the Bush administration
- Bush Jr. – and the Obama administration, and what did he find? No
change. And I think that segues into this issue of the West’s support and
connivance with its allies over the use of Islamist proxies to overthrow
Governments who do not meet Western approval.
JC: Do
you think that’s something that happens pretty much everywhere? I mean, you
know, when you talk about ‘Double Government’ or ‘Parallel Government’ of
course I immediately think of things like the ‘Continuity of Government’
provisions in the US that people often talk about in relation to 9/11, and of
course Operation Gladio itself here in Europe, which on this program that Daniele
Ganser described as a kind of shadow NATO or hidden, parallel NATO. Do you
think these kinds of power structures are to be found pretty much everywhere?
AM:
I
think it’s fair enough to say that there are always power brokers in every
society. I think in every government set up that word ‘Deep State’ – it’s
derived from a Turkish term – this fusion of military officials and gangsters
dictated the way the government ran, much in the way that Propaganda Due, the pseudo-Masonic
Lodge, operated in Italy. You go to literally any society. For instance in
Nigeria, where I originate from, you had something called the ‘Kaduna Mafia’,
which is the northern Muslim elite, who through successive military governments
and the first civilian government played a huge part in the decision-making
process in Nigeria, so I think in most societies you are likely to find this
sort of set-up and arrangement.
JC: So,
going back to those remarks we heard a few moments ago: they’re out there,
they’re in the open, we have access to documents that talk about this kind of
thing, which we’ll talk more about in a few minutes I’m sure, and we have other
things like the Clinton emails, some of which again point in this kind of
direction. Now this material is out there and yet very little seems to change,
which makes me want to ask – I guess it’s more a statement of frustration than
a question really – what’s been done to stop any of this?
AM: Well,
from what I can tell very little. If you recall from the issue of Gladio when
it was exposed by the then Prime Minister of Italy, Giulio Andreotti, there
were only a few parliamentary enquiries in Europe, and then they were only
limited – that’s to do with Gladio – so very little there, and in regard to
what General Clark has said, despite the overwhelming evidence, press reports
and position papers, the same can be said for Western Europe – the United
States and Britain – there’s been
absolutely no enquiry, but that evidence is there. Wesley Clark after all was the
man who revealed that there was this plan, just days after 9/11 when he was
revisiting the Pentagon, to take out seven countries in five years and that was
going according to the neo-conservative agenda, the Project for the New
American Century (PNAC).
JC: Yes,
absolutely indeed. I found that really quite eye-opening when I first heard
that, and I still do even though I’ve heard it many times; I still find it
very, very striking, and we’ve referred to that several times over the years here
at TMR. But, let’s hear it once again, because I think it’s really important to
continue refreshing our memories about these kinds of things. So this is Wesley
Clark in conversation with Amy Goodman on Democracy
Now! speaking on March 2nd, 2007.
Wesley
Clark: About ten days after 9/11 I went through the Pentagon
and I saw Secretary Rumsfeld and Deputy Secretary Wolfowitz, and I went
downstairs just to say hello to some of the people on the joint staff who used
to work for me, and one of the generals called me in and he said: “Sir, you’ve
gotta come in and talk to me a second.” And I said: “Well, you’re too busy.” He
said: “No, no”, he says, “We’ve made the decision to go to war with Iraq”. This
was on or about 20th September. I said: “We’re going to war with
Iraq, why?” He said: “I don’t know.” (general
laughter from the audience). He said: “I guess they don’t know what else to
do.” (more laughter) So, I said:
“Well, did they find some information connecting Saddam to al-Qaeda?” He said: “No,
no”, he says: “there’s nothing new that way. They just made the decision to go
to war with Iraq.” He said: “I guess
it’s like we don’t know what to do about terrorists, but we’ve got a good
military and we can take down governments”, and he said “I guess if the only
tool you have is a hammer, every problem has to look like a nail.” So, I came
back to see him a few weeks later, and by that time we were bombing in
Afghanistan, and I said: “Are we still going to war with Iraq?”, and he said:
“Oh, it’s worse than that.” He reached over on his desk, he picked up a piece
of paper and he said: “I just got this down from upstairs from the Secretary of
Defense’s office today, and this is a memo that describes how we’re going to
take out seven countries in five years starting with Iraq and then Syria,
Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off with Iran. I said: “Is it
classified?” He said: “Yes, Sir!” I said (yet
more laughter from the audience) “Well, don’t show it to me.” I saw him a
year or so ago and I said: “Do you remember that?” He said: “Sir, I didn’t show
you that memo; I didn’t show it to you!”
AM:
And
we see those position papers actually predicting, and we see their fulfillment
to this very day in terms of the countries that have been taken out: Iraq,
Libya, Sudan, Somalia, Syria, an ongoing quest in which it looks as if they’ve
being frustrated, but in all situations all roads lead to Iran. We talk about
position papers, apart from the Project for a New American Century, and these
two revelations by General Clark, you also have a paper from 2008 by the Rand
Corporation, which is a well-known Right-wing think-tank long in existence. They
produced a paper which was sponsored by the Pentagon, which was about the unfolding
of the ‘Long War’, the role of the US Army and this ‘Long War’ that had to be
waged in the Middle East, which had to do with preserving American power, and it’s
very, very specific that one way in which the United States can maintain its
power is to give support to these conservative monarchies in the Gulf – Saudi
Arabia, the Gulf Emirates, for instance, and the other pliable nations
presumably like Egypt and Jordan. You give support to them, but also make use
of Salafists, Islamic radicals, and play upon the sectarian divide of Sunni and
Shia. It actually says “fomenting”. I’m not quoting it word for word, but fomenting
these problems in these zones where you can pit the Salafists against the
Shias, that will keep them busy and will likely prevent terrorist outrages in
the West as occurred on September 11th, and so all the signs are
there. There are many others we could make a use of. Those who formulated the
Project for a New American Century papers were also responsible for the
document known as the Securing the Realm
document that was presented to Binyamin Netanyahu in his first tenure as the Israeli
Prime Minister in the mid-1990s, and it called for the rolling back of Syria
and co-operation with “moderate” Arab and Muslim states like Jordan, which is
effectively a protectorate of Israel, and Turkey, to challenge these
recalcitrant regimes who are anti-West and anti-Israel. So, it’s out there, but,
alas, there’s no sort of concerted conscientious move among the political
classes, the society, to actually examine the realities of this policy, this
overarching policy, and challenge it.
JC: And
something of this Western support for Salafists did come out, did it not, into
the mainstream media with the US Defense Intelligence Agency document 2012 that
was obtained by Judicial Watch in 2015, and of course Mike Flynn had been in
charge of the DIA during that time, 2012 to 2014, and he was challenged on this
document in an interview? But, this document does say that the Gulf States,
Turkey and the West desired to have a Salafist State develop in the Middle East,
essentially for the purposes of going against Assad, for going against Syria.
And let me quote it here. So, Section 8c headed: The Effects on Iraq, reads: “If the situation unravels, there is
the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist Principality
in Eastern Syria, Al Hasaka and Der Zor, and this is exactly what the
supporting powers to the opposition want in order to isolate the Syrian Regime,
which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion, Iraq and Iran,
and then to define what is meant by the ‘supporting powers’ we go to Section
7b, and there they are defined as: “On the other hand ‘Opposition Forces’ are
trying to control the eastern areas – Al Hasaka and Der Zor – adjacent to the
western Iraqi provinces of Mosul and Anbar, in addition to neighbouring Turkish
borders. Western countries, the Gulf States, and Turkey are supporting these
efforts.” So there we have a definition of what the “supporting powers” means,
so there it is. It seems, though, that Mike Flynn, as head of the DIA at the
time, did flag this up to the Obama Administration, but they pretty much
ignored it. In fact, he was asked in that interview if he thought that they
turned a blind eye to his analysis and he replied: “I don’t know whether they
turned a blind eye. I think it was a decision, a willful decision.” So, let’s
hear that. It’s quite a long excerpt, but I think it’s worth persevering with,
because I think it’s very instructive. This is Mike Flynn interviewed on Al Jazeera in 2015 by Mehdi Hasan.
Mehdi
Hasan: Many people would argue that the US actually saw the
rise of ISIL coming and turned a blind eye, or even encouraged it as a
counterpoint to Assad, and a secret analysis by the agency, the Defense
Intelligence Agency, in August 2012, said and I quote: “There is the
possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist -though it’s not
secret anymore; it was released under FOI- Principality in eastern Syria and
this is exactly what the Supporting Powers to the Opposition want in order to
isolate the Syrian Regime.” The US saw the ISIL Caliphate coming and did
nothing.
Mike
Flynn: Yeah, I think that where we missed the point, where we
totally blew it, I think, was in the very beginning. I mean we’re talking four years
now into this effort in Syria. Most people won’t even remember it’s only been a
couple of years of the Free Syrian Army – that movement – and where are they
today? Al Nusra? Where are they today and how much have they changed? When you
don’t get in and help somebody, they’re going to find other means to achieve
their goals. And I think right now, what we have allowed is these extremist
militants to come in.
Mehdi
Hasan: Why did you allow them to do that General? You were in post;
you were the head of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
Mike
Flynn: Yeah, right, right, those are policy issues.
Mehdi
Hasan: This is a memo I quoted from . . . did you see this
document in 2012? Did this come across your table?
Mike
Flynn: Yeah, yeah, I paid very close attention to all . . .
Mehdi
Hasan: So, when you saw this, did you not pick up the phone
and say: “What on earth are we doing supporting the Syrian rebels?”
Mike
Flynn: Sure, that kind of information is presented and...
Mehdi
Hasan: And what did you do about it?
Mike
Flynn: …those become argued about it.
Mehdi
Hasan: Did you say: “We shouldn’t be supporting these groups?”
Mike
Flynn: I did. I mean we argued about the different groups that
were there, and we said, you know, who is it that’s involved here, and I will
tell you that I do believe that the intelligence was very clear, and now it’s a
matter of whether or not policy is going to be as clear and as defining and as
precise as it needs to be, and I don’t believe it was.
Mehdi
Hasan: Just a moment, you’re saying, just to clarify here,
you’re saying today, today my understanding is, we should have backed the
rebels. You’re saying in government you agreed with this…
Mike
Flynn: We should have done more earlier on in this effort, you
know, than we did. We…
Mehdi
Hasan: But in 2012, three years ago, let’s just be clear for
the sake of our viewers, in 2012 your agency was saying, quote: “The Salafists,
the Muslim Brotherhood, and Al Qaeda in Iraq are the major forces driving the
insurgency in Syria.” In 2012, the US was helping co-ordinate arms transfers to
those same groups. Why did you not stop that if you’re worried about the rise
of quote/unquote ‘Islamism’.
Mike
Flynn: I hate to say it’s not my job, but my job was to ensure
that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as
it could be, and I will tell you that it goes before 2012 when we were in Iraq
and we still had decisions to be made before there was a decision to pull out
of Iraq in 2011. I mean it was very clear what we were going to face.
Mehdi
Hasan: Well, I admire your frankness, General. Let me just say
before we move on, just to clarify once more, you are basically saying that
even in government at the time, you knew those groups were around, you saw this
analysis and you were arguing against it, but who wasn’t listening?
Mike
Flynn: I think the Administration.
Mehdi
Hasan: Did the Administration turn a blind eye to your
analysis.
Mike
Flynn: I don’t know that they turned a blind eye, I think it
was a decision, I think it was a willful decision.
Mehdi
Hasan: A willful decision to support an insurgency that had
Salafist, al-Qaeda and Muslim Brotherhood amongst it?
Mike
Flynn: A willful decision to do what they’re doing.
JC:
He’s
right there; it seems very clear that the Obama Administration was basically
saying leave that alone, just leave that alone, that is policy.
AM: Absolutely,
it’s all out there, and I think also that that particular document you
mentioned, the DIA document that was discovered through the Freedom of
Information Act request by Judicial Watch, also refers to the methodologies
that would be used, so we can look to the past and we can actually look to the
present. In other words, this whole idea about creating ‘safe zones’. Any time
you hear that word ‘No Fly Zone’, we should be aware that that is a code for
protecting Salafist insurgents and enabling their growth to overthrow a
government, because that very technique, which was referred to in that paper,
was used under the Right-to-Protect doctrine, so it was called when Gaddafi was
overthrown when that uprising occurred in Benghazi, so the whole idea was that
if the Libyan Air Force gets within range they will be bombed out of existence.
And then we see it again being threatened while the Russians are there in
Syria, it’s broached ‘No Fly Zone’, Aleppo ‘No Fly Zone’, using human
suffering, genuine human suffering, as a fait accompli, but actually, really,
it’s part of a devious plan to give these Salafists, Jihadists, the opportunity
to wreak havoc and to overthrow governments not to the liking of the West.
Let’s also be aware that there are interests that coalesce here, but ultimately
it’s the West that is the deciding influence in things, so the Saudis, the
Turks will not act without Western approval much in the same way as the Israeli
Government, which has an interest in the destruction of Syria and the
balkanization of the Arab world, also tends to rely … For instance, they don’t
want to attack Iran independently, they want America to help them do that, so
that coalescence of interests, which, for the Saudis, is about extending their
realm of influence. That fight they had over the years with secular Pan-Arabism,
which they effectively won after the Six Day War and the demise of Gamal Abdel
Nasser and now the overthrow of Libya as Gaddafi and the Baathists ruler-ship
in Iraq, they want to extend their influence, and also there was the issue of
the oil pipeline going through Syria. There’s also that interest I mentioned
about Israel being fundamentally predicated on the balkanization of the Arab
world. Even before its creation, a necessary condition was the break-up of the
Ottoman Empire, and then after the implementation of the Sykes-Picot Agreement,
wherein the British and the French divided the Middle East into these
artificial nation states, Israel has sought to have these nations further
divided, and then of course you have Turkey; the Turks are interested in the
oil pipeline because obviously they want to be the conduit between the Gulf and
Western Europe.
JC: So
this is the pipeline going from Qatar up through Syria into Turkey, rather than
the alternative, which is going from Iran through Syria servicing Europe
through that way?
AM: Absolutely.
That’s right. So the Turks wanted to be involved with that, but Assad refused,
and also it links into something I believe we’re going to discuss later on in
terms of the connection between Turkey and its Ottoman predecessor with Germany,
and that is to do with Turkish ambitions to establish some form of a pan-Turkic
sphere of influence through central Asia right up to the border with China.
JC: Yes,
indeed we will come to that. We will talk about Germany and the fact that it
has had these kinds of relationships in the past. You mention Gaddafi and his
overthrow in 2011, and that brings up the role of France and even Britain in
this action. Do you want to say something about that?
AM:
Absolutely.
I think right from the beginning my understanding was that the action to
overthrow Gaddafi was initiated by French intelligence, and I think that has
been actually to a certain degree confirmed. Nicolas Sarkozy was involved in
that, but also once that decision was made, and Britain became involved with
America acting as a guarantor and its naval power in the Mediterranean
supported operations; once that was agreed upon and things fell into place and
the overarching issues of overthrowing certain governments then came into play,
so the French were involved there, particularly with the use of their air
force, but also the British were involved there in a way which is fairly
clear-cut compared to some of these other insurgencies we will talk about,
because we know for a fact that Britain sent Special Forces to train members of
the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an Al-Qaeda-affiliated group, and they were
embedded within them, they trained them, and directed operations in the battle
against the Libyan forces of Colonel Gaddafi.
JC: And
we have this confirmed by one of the Clinton emails.
AM: We
not only have that, we have the BBC confirm it. And, if you recall, at the
beginning of the conflict, near its beginning in the early part of 2011, there
was this episode where a certain Libyan insurrectionist, a militia, caught
British officials who were being accompanied by Special Forces. These were, I
think, people from the Foreign Office, but obviously MI6, being accompanied by
a detachment of SAS troops, and so I think that was a shaky introduction. But, I
think things were sorted out because obviously they were released and the
subsequent relationship we’ve just mentioned about British forces, Special
Forces, helping them did come about.
JC: Yes,
going back to France’s role in this, the accusation that’s often made against
Sarkozy seems to be borne out by one of the Clinton emails that France was very
worried, or I suppose the elite of France was very worried, that Libya was
going to establish a pan-African currency based on Libyan gold, and that they
had billions, apparently, in gold and a similar amount in silver, and there
were various other reasons why France was concerned that Libya would be going
its ‘own way’. Again, let me quote from that email. So this is email No.
C05785522, which you can read at FOIA.state.gov -and I shall put links into the
show notes of course. So this is Sidney Blumenthal to Hilary Clinton dated
April 2nd 2011, and the subject is: “France’s Client and Gaddafi’s Gold.”
O.K., and I’m quoting here: “According to sensitive information available to
these individuals” -and I’ve just explained that sources with access to one of
Gaddafi’s sons- and I’m continuing with the quote now: “According to sensitive
information available to these individuals, Gaddafi’s government holds 143 tons
of gold and a similar amount in silver. This gold was accumulated prior to the
current rebellion, and was intended to be used to establish a pan-African
currency based on the Libyan gold dinar. This plan was designed to provide the
francophone African countries with an alternative to the French franc CFA”, and
there’s a source comment here: “According to the knowledgeable individuals,
this quantity of gold and silver is valued at more than 7 billion dollars.
French intelligence officers discovered this plan shortly after the current
rebellion began, and this was one of the factors that influenced President
Nicholas Sarkozy’s decision to commit France to the attack on Libya. According
to these individuals, Sarkozy’s plans are driven by the following issues:
A. A desire to gain a greater share of Libya oil
production,
B. Increase French influence in North Africa,
C. Improve his internal political situation in France,
D. Provide the French military with an opportunity to
reassert its position in the world,
E. Address the concern of his advisors over Gaddafi’s
long-term plans to supplant France as the dominant power in francophone Africa.
So, it does seem that there’s very good evidence here
that it was in France’s interest to push all of this.
AM: Oh,
absolutely. It was under Nicolas Sarkozy’s watch that France became integrated
into NATO’s military structure. General Charles De Gaulle had withdrawn France
from NATO’s military structure back in the 1960s. In fact he’d evicted NATO
from its Paris Headquarters, and was later forced to relocate to Brussels, and Nicolas
Sarkozy’s intention was, as you stated, to reinforce France’s power, and we saw
that in the way France intervened in the Ivory Coast, and also in Central West
Africa around Mali. But what you mentioned there about the creation of the gold
dinar by Col. Gaddafi is very, very important, because again that was something
that was broached, but there wasn’t some sort of official confirmation. At
times you really feel that definitely was the case, but we need the evidence,
and, you know, due to WikiLeaks and things like that, and admissions by the
likes of Roland Dumas and Wesley Clark, we do get confirmation and if we look
at that economic angle to the overthrow of Gaddafi, we can see precedents
elsewhere: Syria is an example of a country that wasn’t a member of certain
western banking institutions. And also Saddam Hussein: One of the reasons he
was overthrown is because he threatened not to use the dollar in terms of
trading in oil; he wanted to use the euro, and so it does seem that those
nations from the so-called developing world, or other parts of the world
actually, any part of the world, who do not toe the line with Washington are
earmarked for destruction.
JC: I
want to return to Iran. You mentioned Iran a little while ago, and I want to
throw into the conversation yet another one of these pieces of documentary
evidence, because I think it’s a very striking piece of information, so this is
the Brookings Institution publishing their “Which
Path to Persia” document from 2009,
their so-called analysis paper, which is subtitled “Options for a New American
Strategy towards Iran”, an
interesting title there that seems to connect with the Project for a New
American Century in my mind, and they have various suggestions as to how regime
change could take place in Iran, and they actually go so far as to suggest
inspiring an insurgency – this is in chapter 7 – and using groups like Mojahedin-e-Khaiq,
which, at the time, were designated as terrorists by the US, and here is the
Brookings Institution, which is very well-known think-tank and one of the most
widely quoted think-tanks in Washington DC, actually suggesting yes, we could
use these people to conduct terrorist operations against Iran. What’s your
reaction to the fact that we have a document like that, and yet this
information is not widely known by people?
AM:
It’s
not widely known presumably because there
can be that fallback position that, “Oh well,
this is just merely a think-tank, they’re putting things out into the open and
it’s up to the policy makers and the deciders of Government to rely on it or
not”.
JC: And
yet, at the time, they were designated as terrorists. You would think that that
would be unacceptable, or you would think should be unacceptable even to be
mentioned by such a supposedly august institution.
AM: That’s
absolutely true. Again, being an august institution obviously it will not be
well known to the general public, but, time and again, we see these issues in
these documents. Let me put it this way: think about Senator John McCain, the
Chairman of the Arms Services Committee in the Senate, who made visits while
that Libyan insurrection was ongoing in the early part of 2011, just a month or
two after it began. It may not have been widely known to the public at the
time, although Col. Gaddafi in one of his speeches, which was reported in the
West, but discounted as the ravings of a mad man, he said, “you’re supporting al-Qaeda”.
Here’s John McCain walking through the streets of Benghazi and basically giving
succor to Islamist belligerents, people who subscribe to the ideology of al-Qaeda,
the very people who were said to have perpetrated the 9/11 atrocity, the people
who were supposed to be the enemies of the West. You can look at the same thing
with John McCain’s illegal visits to Syria, and meeting so-called ‘moderates’,
who, later on, turn out to be members of hardline Islamist groups, and you also
see John McCain fraternizing with people with neo-Nazi sympathies like the
leader of Svoboda in Ukraine. So, putting the Brookings Institute and these
think-tanks to one side, we do actually see confirmation between that sort of
contact between a prominent serving western politician and these proscribed
organizations, so not surprising.
JC:
No,
not surprising really, and under the surface we can imagine all sorts of links
making a quite coherent policy towards all this in fact, and linking back into
history, and of course this is where your article I think is so important is
where you show this way of thinking is nothing new; it’s been going on for a
long time, and in many different places, and one of the first places that you
go to in your discussion here is Germany, and you start by looking at Heinrich
Himmler giving a 1944 speech where he is basically saying that Islam is ideal:
If you’re going to be a soldier, well why not be an Islamist? And you also go
back beyond that to Kaiser Wilhelm’s views of Muslims as good for guerilla
warfare, so do you want to tell us about Germany’s cultivation of Islam,
Islamism, for the purposes of war?
----------------------------------
And I’m afraid the rest of that interview with Adeyinka
Makinde will have to wait till next week, because my time for editing this week
has simply come to an end. I wish it were not so, but it is, so the next part,
as I say, looking into some of the history of this phenomenon will be next
week, not a fortnight from now, but as I always have to say: “All being well.”
© The Mind Renewed and Adeyinka Makinde (2017).
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