By Iain Davis

The impression we are given by our esteemed leaders and the mainstream media (MSM) that so compliantly serves them, is that the Islamist extremists represent an existential threat to our “way of life”. The Islamists hate us, in the West, and most importantly, “hate our freedom”. From time to time, depending upon the geopolitical realities of the day, we are reminded that the threat level is severe and asked to be vigilant, prepared to “run, hide, tell” if ever we witness masked men with guns, though they may well be police officers, but it’s probably best to be terrified in any event.

The slight problem with all this is that the Western military-industrial-intelligence complex has been working with, arming, equipping, training and deploying Islamist extremist terrorist organisations for at least half a century. While there is no doubt that outfits like Islamic State group, Al-Qaeda and Jaysh al-Islam are murderous thugs, it’s not entirely clear who they work for, or whose purpose they serve, at any given moment.

Afghanistan

Prior to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979, President Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, was the key architect of a plan to arm the Afghan mujahideen in what would later be known as Operation Cyclone. Brzezinski’s aim was to bog the Russian forces down in an energy- and resource-sapping war in Afghanistan.

He believed that arming the Afghan tribesmen presented an opportunity for the US to give Russia its own Vietnam. He saw the Islamists of the mujahideen as a useful tool to be wielded in support of US geopolitical objectives. In 1979 he flew to the Pakistan border with Afghanistan and told the gathered mujahideen:

We know of your deep belief in God and we are confident that your struggle will succeed. That land over there [Afghanistan] is yours. You’ll go back to it one day because your fight will prevail and you’ll have your homes and your mosques back again, because your cause is right and God is on your side.

Thus began the modern era of cooperation between the Western powers, predominantly the US, the UK and France, and various Islamist extremist groups that has continued to this day.

While Operation Cyclone is widely acknowledged, any suggestion that Western powers continued their strategic support for Islamists groups, beyond the 1989 withdrawal of the Soviets from Afghanistan, is strictly taboo. We are instead asked to accept the simple narrative that the “war on terror” is essentially a battle of good versus evil.

The goodies are us, along with the factions we arm to the teeth, so they can fight for “democracy”; the baddies are everyone who opposes them, who are also heavily armed, usually by either Russia or Iran apparently, the Syrian government, for example.

There is considerable evidence the Western power’s have continued to use Islamist terrorists as proxies in a game of geostrategic manipulation, inspired by globalist thinkers like Brzezinski, financed by the global corporations and the governments they control. Currently, this is most notable in Syria. However, we can trace the post-Operation Cyclone relationship back to the early 1990s. Essentially, following the end of the mujahideen’s conflict with the Russians, the West’s relationship with Islamists never ended.

Bosnia-Herzegovina

In 1991 both Croatia and Slovenia seceded from Yugoslavia, shortly followed by a declaration of independence by Bosnia-Herzegovina. Slobadan Milosevic’s Serbian government supported the Bosnian Serb’s rejection of the declaration and violence erupted between Bosnian Serbs and Muslims. Sadly, having previously coexisted in relative harmony, this bitter conflict literally pitted neighbours against each other. The violence was appalling and exacerbated when the Croats switched allegiance from the Serbs to the Bosnian Muslims.

Bosnia-Herzegovina devolved into three separate regions. One Muslim Bosniak, another Croat and the other Serb. During the Bosnian War the Bosnian Muslim were supported by the US and the UK (and earlier Iran and Saudi Arabia), the Croats drew Catholic support from across Europe and the Russians, Israelis, Greeks and Ukrainians supported the Serbs, again drawing fighters from a number of eastern orthodox nations. Effectively, during this period, the Bosnian War, the war in Kosovo, the Albanian civil war and the insurgencies in the Presevo Valley and the Republic of Macedonia were all heavily influenced by more powerful, external players. They all exercised their realpolitik through the sponsorship of various military factions.

In 1996 the Dutch government commissioned a report from the Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) into the events surrounding the Bosnian War and, in particular, the massacre at Srebrenica. Their published 2002 report was a product of investigators’ unrestricted access to Dutch intelligence and high level access to other intelligence service’s personnel and documentation. Their finding were extensive and unequivocal. It demonstrated the supposed UN Security Council arms embargo was essentially a publicity stunt designed to give the impression that governments were trying to stop the killing. In reality, they were orchestrating it.

The word “government” is used advisedly here. There is a difference between what most of us understand “government” to mean and the nexus of unelected private interests who wield power over and above nation states. This is often collectively referred to as the New World Order (NWO.) This is itself slightly misleading but suffice to say “government” here means those who control it, not those who are elected to represent it.

The Dutch report clarified that the CIA and MI6 were aware of the Iranian supply of arms and fighters to support the Bosnian Muslim army. Rather than attempt to stop it, in 1993, they took it over and expanded “the Croatian pipeline”. It required the shipment of weapons, fighters and equipment via Turkey and Croatia into the war zone. The Dutch report stated:

Clinton and State Department officials considered supplies via Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Pakistan. This was not new: in the 1980s Saudi Arabia had already supplied arms worth $500 million via the CIA to the mujaheedin fighters in Afghanistan. There had also already been a close relationship with Turkey in the area of intelligence for some considerable time. For instance, there were various American monitoring stations in Turkey, and there was close collaboration of the Turkish domestic security service with the CIA and the FBI.

Previously, in 1992, a 14-man CIA-backed team consisting of “retired” US military personnel entered Bosnia through Croatia and set up a training camp in Meskovic, a village near the town of Tuzla. CIA support for the Bosnian Islamists came through the “Croatian pipeline”. Arms bought in Iran and Turkey, with Saudi “front” money, were dropped by blacked out Hercules C-130s to the waiting forces below. The Dutch governmental report into the breach of the U.N embargo stated that Islamist fighters also entered the conflict through this route.

Building upon their extensive relationships with Islamist extremists, the Western governments saw the Bosnian War as an ideal opportunity, one they had effectively created, to continue the strategy of tension in Europe and move the most extreme Islamist elements towards a global presence.