"The theory of USA's fighting godlessness seems to be absurd."
I do not think that is what Mr. Roy meant to say. US was no God friendlier than Soviets in those days. It was cold war time and Soviet Russia was not a good friend of US. It just wanted Russia to bleed and die from the defeat. It just employed enemy's enemy to destroy a mortal enemy. Besides, a mujahedin's life was cheaper than a loaf of bread.
Historically, this is an old but great strategy to take on your opponent!
-SD
--- In mukto-mona@yahoogroups.com, Subimal Chakrabarty <subimal@...> wrote:
>
> 1. The theory of USA's fighting godlessness seems to be absurd. Reasons for the fight were more deep rooted.
> 2. Unless we get rid of our mental and intellectual inertia in the way we read history, our analysis and conclusions are doomed to be misleading. We need to be open minded to the emerging evidences based on research and unclassified documents seeing the light of the day.
>
> Sent from my iPhone
>
> On May 15, 2012, at 6:15 PM, Jiten Roy <jnrsr53@...> wrote:
>
> > Yes, USA supported fundamentalists, Al-Qaeda, Taliban, Mujahedin, etc. to counter godless communist invasion in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the world. There was no better way to fight communism than to promote and recruit religious fundamentalists throughout the world to fight cold war. The fundamentalists were extremely motivated suicidal warriors, and they were already fighting against Soviet invasion. They could not gain foothold against sophisticated Russian Army. Therefore, all USA had to do is - train them and help them with arms and ammunitions. That’s exactly what USA did there. USA just made use of well motivated ready-made fighters against Soviet Army. Therefore, it will be wrong to say that USA created Taliban and Al-Qaeda. USA did not create them - they were there long before Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. USA just used them.
> >
> >
> >
> > Cold war is over, and the usefulness of religious fundamentalists for USA has ended. Now, Russia and China have found them useful, and they are using them against USA whenever they can. In both situations, religious fundamentalists are the sacrificial lambs, and they are not aware of it. They are too blinded by their religious faith to see these phenomena.
> >
> >
> >
> > Jiten Roy
> >
> > --- On Tue, 5/15/12, Farida Majid <farida_majid@...> wrote:
> >
> > From: Farida Majid <farida_majid@...>
> > Subject: [mukto-mona] FW: 9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan to George W Bush
> > To:
> > Date: Tuesday, May 15, 2012, 3:49 PM
> >
> >
> > Please read this and try to understand why, with what force secular, progressive Muslim voices have been gagged in the subcontinent. In the War of aggression in 1971 which ended with the birth of Bangladesh USA aided the aggressor Pakistani Military with arms and finance. This should also explain why Jamaat and its honcho war criminals of 1971 have been dominating Bangladeshi politics for the last 36 years.
> > From time to time I have been writing about these USA/CIA and Islamic fundamentalism alliance for last two decades. My article, "Law, Literature and Islam" (in Law and Literature Perspectives, ed. Bruce Rockwood, Peter Lang 1996, 2006) delves into the Salman Rushdie Affair and touches upon some of the points (such as the Iran-Contra scheme during Reagan administration) highlighted by Michel Chossudovky here.
> >
> > Farida Majid
> >
> > To:
> >
> > Date: Thu, 3 May 2012 12:46:26 +0600
> > Subject: 9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan to George W Bush
> >
> >
> >
> > 9/11 ANALYSIS: From Ronald Reagan to George W Bush
> >
> > by Michel Chossudovsky
> >
> > This article summarizes earlier writings by the author on 9/11 and the role of Al Qaeda in US foreign policy. For further details see Michel Chossudovsky, America's "War on Terrorism", Global Research, 2005
> >
> > "The United States spent millions of dollars to supply Afghan schoolchildren with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings....The primers, which were filled with talk of jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, have served since then as the Afghan school system's core curriculum. Even the Taliban used the American-produced books,..", (Washington Post, 23 March 2002)
> >
> > "Advertisements, paid for from CIA funds, were placed in newspapers and newsletters around the world offering inducements and motivations to join the [Islamic] Jihad." (Pervez Hoodbhoy, Peace Research, 1 May 2005)
> >
> > "Bin Laden recruited 4,000 volunteers from his own country and developed close relations with the most radical mujahideen leaders. He also worked closely with the CIA, ... Since September 11, [2001] CIA officials have been claiming they had no direct link to bin Laden." (Phil Gasper, International Socialist Review, November-December 2001)
> >
> > Highlights
> >
> > -Osama bin Laden, America's bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihad. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.
> >
> > -The architects of the covert operation in support of "Islamic fundamentalism" launched during the Reagan presidency played a key role in launching the "Global War on Terrorism" in the wake of 9/11.
> >
> > - President Ronald Reagan met the leaders of the Islamic Jihad at the White House in 1985
> >
> > -Under the Reagan adminstration, US foreign policy evolved towards the unconditional support and endorsement of the Islamic "freedom fighters". In today's World, the "freedom fighters" are labelled "Islamic terrorists".
> >
> > -In the Pashtun language, the word "Taliban" means "Students", or graduates of the madrasahs (places of learning or coranic schools) set up by the Wahhabi missions from Saudi Arabia, with the support of the CIA.
> >
> > -Education in Afghanistan in the years preceding the Soviet-Afghan war was largely secular. The US covert education destroyed secular education. The number of CIA sponsored religious schools (madrasahs) increased from 2,500 in 1980 to over 39,000.
> >
> >
> >
> > The Soviet-Afghan war was part of a CIA covert agenda initiated during the Carter administration, which consisted in actively supporting and financing the Islamic brigades, later known as Al Qaeda.
> >
> > The Pakistani military regime played from the outset in the late 1970s, a key role in the US sponsored military and intelligence operations in Afghanistan. In the post-Cold war era, this central role of Pakistan in US intelligence operations was extended to the broader Central Asia- Middle East region. From the outset of the Soviet Afghan war in 1979, Pakistan under military rule actively supported the Islamic brigades. In close liaison with the CIA, Pakistan's military intelligence, the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), became a powerful organization, a parallel government, wielding tremendous power and influence.
> >
> > America's covert war in Afghanistan, using Pakistan as a launch pad, was initiated during the Carter administration prior to the Soviet "invasion":
> > "According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahideen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention." (Former National Security adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, Interview with Le Nouvel Observateur, 15-21 January 1998)
> > In the published memoirs of Defense Secretary Robert Gates, who held the position of deputy CIA Director at the height of the Soviet Afghan war, US intelligence was directly involved from the outset, prior to the Soviet invasion, in channeling aid to the Islamic brigades.
> >
> > With CIA backing and the funneling of massive amounts of U.S. military aid, the Pakistani ISI had developed into a "parallel structure wielding enormous power over all aspects of government". (Dipankar Banerjee, "Possible Connection of ISI With Drug Industry", India Abroad, 2 December 1994). The ISI had a staff composed of military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers, estimated at 150,000. (Ibid)
> > Meanwhile, CIA operations had also reinforced the Pakistani military regime led by General Zia Ul Haq:
> > "Relations between the CIA and the ISI had grown increasingly warm following [General] Zia’s ouster of Bhutto and the advent of the military regime. … During most of the Afghan war, Pakistan was more aggressively anti-Soviet than even the United States. Soon after the Soviet military invaded Afghanistan in 1980, Zia [ul Haq] sent his ISI chief to destabilize the Soviet Central Asian states. The CIA only agreed to this plan in October 1984." (Ibid)
> > The ISI operating virtually as an affiliate of the CIA, played a central role in channeling support to Islamic paramilitary groups in Afghanistan and subsequently in the Muslim republics of the former Soviet Union.
> > Acting on behalf of the CIA, the ISI was also involved in the recruitment and training of the Mujahideen. In the ten year period from 1982 to 1992, some 35,000 Muslims from 43 Islamic countries were recruited to fight in the Afghan jihad. The madrassas in Pakistan, financed by Saudi charities, were also set up with US support with a view to "inculcating Islamic values". "The camps became virtual universities for future Islamic radicalism," (Ahmed Rashid, The Taliban). Guerilla training under CIA-ISI auspices included targeted assassinations and car bomb attacks.
> > "Weapons' shipments "were sent by the Pakistani army and the ISI to rebel camps in the North West Frontier Province near the Afghanistan border. The governor of the province is Lieutenant General Fazle Haq, who [according to Alfred McCoy] . allowed "hundreds of heroin refineries to set up in his province." Beginning around 1982, Pakistani army trucks carrying CIA weapons from Karachi often pick up heroin in Haq’s province and return loaded with heroin. They are protected from police search by ISI papers."(1982-1989: US Turns Blind Eye to BCCI and Pakistani Government Involvement in Heroin Trade See also McCoy, 2003, p. 477) .
> >
> > Front row, from left: Major Gen. Hamid Gul, director general of Pakistan's
> > Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI), Director of Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
> > Willian Webster; Deputy Director for Operations Clair George; an ISI colonel; and senior CIA official,
> > Milt Bearden at a mujahedeen training camp in North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan in 1987.
> > (source RAWA)
> >
> > Osama Bin Laden
> > Osama bin Laden, America's bogyman, was recruited by the CIA in 1979 at the very outset of the US sponsored jihad. He was 22 years old and was trained in a CIA sponsored guerilla training camp.
> > During the Reagan administration, Osama, who belonged to the wealthy Saudi Bin Laden family was put in charge of raising money for the Islamic brigades. Numerous charities and foundations were created. The operation was coordinated by Saudi intelligence, headed by Prince Turki al-Faisal, in close liaison with the CIA. The money derived from the various charities were used to finance the recruitment of Mujahieen volunteers. Al Qaeda, the base in Arabic was a data bank of volunteers who had enlisted to fight in the Afghan jihad. That data base was initially held by Osama bin Laden.
> > The Reagan Administration supports "Islamic Fundamentalism"
> > Pakistan's ISI was used as a "go-between". CIA covert support to the Mujahideen in Afghanistan operated indirectly through the Pakistani ISI, --i.e. the CIA did not channel its support directly to the Mujahideen. In other words, for these covert operations to be "successful", Washington was careful not to reveal the ultimate objective of the "jihad", which consisted in destroying the Soviet Union.
> > In December 1984, the Sharia Law (Islamic jurisprudence) was established in Pakistan following a rigged referendum launched by President Muhammad Zia-ul-Haq. Barely a few months later, in March 1985, President Ronald Reagan issued National Security Decision Directive 166 (NSDD 166), which authorized "stepped-up covert military aid to the Mujahideen" as well a support to religious indoctrination.
> > The imposition of The Sharia in Pakistan and the promotion of "radical Islam" was a deliberate US policy serving American geopolitical interests in South Asia, Central Asia and the Middle East. Many present-day "Islamic fundamentalist organizations" in the Middle East and Central Asia, were directly or indirectly the product of US covert support and financing, often channeled through foundations from Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States. Missions from the Wahhabi sect of conservative Islam in Saudi Arabia were put in charge of running the CIA sponsored madrassas in Northern Pakistan.
> > U
>
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