Point of FACT: The Muslim Brotherhood IS Hamas, in Gaza and everywhere else they operate, Al Qaeda is just a branch of the Muslim Brotherhood as is the PA and PNA. The Muslim Brotherhood is the same that assassinated Anwar Sadat and tried to overthrow Gamel Abdul Nasser of Egypt. The Muslim Brotherhood is just a CIA front. They are part of the Iran Contra insurgency that operated from CIA/KGB controlled Ayatollah-Mullah-Nationalistic/Communistic Iran from the beginning. CIA/KGB controlled Iran from before that during the Shah and his SAVAK, a branch of the Mossad. KGB controlled Iran from 1935 before that. It is a Communist New World Order operation for a very long time with 19th century British roots which took the 20th century form of MI6 saboteur agents in the Middle East.
The CIA’S Friends, From Bin Laden To The Moslem Brotherhood
Moslem KLA leader Hashim Thaci, Bernard Kouchner, General Sir Michael Jackson, KLA commander Agim Ceku, and General Wesley Clark; Pristina, 1999.
And, reportedly, the CIA has long made use of Moslem groups to do their dirty work.
On 1 November 2001, Marcia Kurop, at The Wall Street Journal Europe, wrote about Osama bin Laden’s Balkan Links.(Al Qaeda’s Balkan Links_)
The Wall Street Journal Europe, November 01, 2001Al Qaeda's Balkan Links
November 1, 2001
by Marcia Christoff Kurop
The Balkans' uncharacteristically silent exit from the world stage as the most prominent international hot spot of the last decade belies its status as a major recruiting and training center of Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network. By feeding off the region's impoverished republics and taking root in the unsettled diplomatic aftermath of the Bosnia and Kosovo conflicts, al Qaeda, along with Iranian Revolutionary Guard-sponsored terrorists, have burrowed their way into Europe's backyard.
For the past 10 years, the most senior leaders of al Qaeda have visited the Balkans, including bin Laden himself on three occasions between 1994 and 1996. The Egyptian surgeon turned terrorist leader Ayman Al-Zawahiri has operated terrorist training camps, weapons of mass destruction factories and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia. This has gone on for a decade. Many recruits to the Balkan wars came originally from Chechnya, a jihad in which Al Qaeda has also played a part.
These activities have been exhaustively researched by Yossef Bodansky, the former director of the U.S. House of Representatives' Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare. The February testimony of an Islamist ringleader associated with the East Africa bombings have also helped throw light on these actions.
They have however been disguised under the cover of dozens of "humanitarian" agencies spread throughout Bosnia, Kosovo and Albania. Funding has come from now-defunct banks such as the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank and from bin Laden's so-called Advisory and Reformation Committee. One of his largest Islamist front agencies, it was established in London in 1994.
Narco-Jihad Culture
The overnight rise of heroin trafficking through Kosovo -- now the most important Balkan route between Southeast Asia and Europe after Turkey -- helped also to fund terrorist activity directly associated with al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard. Opium poppies, which barely existed in the Balkans before 1995, have become the No. 1 drug cultivated in the Balkans after marijuana. Operatives of two al Qaeda-sponsored Islamist cells who were arrested in Bosnia on Oct. 23 were linked to the heroin trade, underscoring the narco-jihad culture of today's post-war Balkans.
These drug rings in turn form part of an estimated $8 billion a year Taliban annual income from global drug trafficking, predominantly in heroin. According to Mr. Bodansky, the terrorism expert, bin Laden administers much of that trade through Russian mafia groups for a commission of 10% to 15% -- or around $1 billion annually.
The settling of Afghan-trained mujahideen in the Balkans began around 1992, when recruits were brought into Bosnia by the ruling Islamic party of Bosnia, the Party of Democratic Action, from Chechnya, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Pakistan, as well as Italy, Germany and Turkey. They were all given journalists' credentials to avoid explicit detection by the West. Others were married immediately to Bosnian Muslim women and incorporated into regular army ranks.
Intelligence services of the Nordic-Polish SFOR (previously IFOR) sector alerted the U.S. of their presence in 1992 while the number of mujahideen operating in Bosnia alone continued to grow from a few hundred to around 6,000 in 1995. Though the Clinton administration had been briefed extensively by the State Department in 1993 on the growing Islamist threat in former Yugoslavia, little was done to follow through.
The Bosnian Embassy in Vienna issued a passport to bin Laden in 1993, according to various reports in the Yugoslav press at the time. The reports add that bin Laden then visited a terrorist camp in Zenica, Bosnia in 1994. The Bosnian government denies all of this, but admits that some passport records have been lost. Around that time, bin Laden directed al Qaeda "senior commanders" to incorporate the Balkans into an complete southeastern approach to Europe, an area stretching from the Caucasus to Italy. Al Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon reputed to be the second in command of the entire al Qaeda network, headed up this southeastern frontline.
By 1994, major Balkan terrorist training camps included Zenica, and Malisevo and Mitrovica in Kosovo. Elaborate command-and-control centers were further established in Croatia, and Tetovo, Macedonia as well as around Sofia, Bulgaria, according to the U.S. Congress's task force on terrorism. In Albania, the main training camp included even the property of former Albanian premier Sali Berisha in Tropje, Albania, who was then very close to the Kosovo Liberation Army.
Not even stalwart NATO ally Turkey escaped the network. Areas beyond government control were also visited by bin Laden in 1996 according to London-based Jane's Intelligence Review. The government has been battling two terrorist groups: Jund al Islam, whose assassinated Syrian leader was one of bin Laden's closets confidantes, and the Kurdish PKK, whose leader, Abdullah Ocalan, merged his group's activities with those of Iran's Hezbollah in 1998.
Furthermore, as revealed in the February 2001 East Africa bombing trial testimony of Jamal al Fadl -- an al Qaeda operative in charge of weapons development in Sudan -- uranium used in "dirty bombs" that release lethal radioactive material, had been tested in 1994 by members of the Sudan-based Islamic National Front in the town of Hilat Koko, in Turkish-held northern Cyprus. Cyprus, both its north and southern sides, has also become a center for offshore money laundering by Arab banks fronting al Qaeda funds into the Balkans. The CIA puts al Qaeda's specific Balkan-directed funds -- those tied to the "humanitarian" agencies and local banks and not explicitly counting the significant drug profits added to that -- at around $500 million to $700 million between 1992 and 1998.
So where was the U.S. in all this? It was not until 1995 that the Clinton administration was forced to start pursuing the Islamist network in the Balkans. Not quite a month after the Dayton accords had been signed in November 1995, an influx of Iranian arms came into Bosnia with the apparent tacit approval of the administration, in violation of U.N. sanctions. While publicly pressing Bosnian President Alia Izebegovic to purge remaining Islamist elements, the administration was loath to confront Sarajevo and Tehran over their presence.
Instead, Islamist groups went quietly underground as the windfall of weapons landed in their hands. They later joined up with a new Islamist center in Sofia established as a kind of rear guard by the al Zawahiri. Following the Zagreb arrest and extradition of renowned Egyptian militant Faud Qassim, an al Zawahiri favorite, the Sofia-based militants planned the deployment in Bosnia of terrorists capable of planning and leading possible major terrorist strikes against U.S. and SFOR facilities, according to al Fadl's testimony to the House Task Force on Terrorism.
Islamist infiltration of the Kosovo Liberation Army advanced, meanwhile. Bin Laden is said to have visited Albania in 1996 and 1997, according to the murder-trial testimony of an Algerian-born French national, Claude Kader, himself an Afghanistan-trained mujahideen fronting at the Albanian-Arab Islamic Bank. He recruited some Albanians to fight with the KLA in Kosovo, according to the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues.
Controversial Relationship
By early 1998 the U.S. had already entered into its controversial relationship with the KLA to help fight off Serbian oppression of that province. While in February the U.S. gave into KLA demands to remove it from the State Department's terrorism list, the gesture amounted to little. That summer the CIA and CIA-modernized Albanian intelligence (SHIK) were engaged in one of the largest seizures of Islamic Jihad cells operating in Kosovo.
Fearing terrorist reprisal from al Qaeda, the U.S. temporarily closed its embassy in Tirana and a trip to Albania by then Defense Secretary William Cohen was canceled out of fear of an assassination attempt. Meanwhile, Albanian separatism in Kosovo and Metohija was formally characterized as a "jihad" in October 1998 at an annual international Islamic conference in Pakistan.
Nonetheless, the 25,000 strong KLA continued to receive official NATO/U.S. arms and training support and, at the talks in Rambouillet, France, then Secretary of State Madeleine Albright shook hands with "freedom fighter" Hashim Thaci, a KLA leader. As this was taking place, Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) was preparing a scathing report on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs. Even Robert Gelbard, America's special envoy to Bosnia, officially described the KLA as Islamic terrorists.
With the future status of Kosovo still in question, the only real development that may be said to be taking place there is the rise of Wahhabi Islam -- the puritanical Saudi variety favored by bin Laden -- and the fastest growing variety of Islam in the Balkans. Today, in general, the Balkans are left without the money, political resources, or institutional strength to fight a war on terrorism. And that, for the Balkan Islamists, is a Godsend.
Links
Bin Laden’s Balkan Connections
http://www.balkanpeace.org/our/our09.shtml
Balkan wars and terrorist ties
http://www.balkanpeace.org/our/our02.shtml
Director of the U.S. Congress' Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional warfare: "Some Call It Peace"
http://members.tripod.com/Balkania/resources/geostrategy/bodansky_peace/bp_part1.html
NATO Probes Claims that Bin Laden is in Kosovo
http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/april00/hed80.shtml
Persecution Watch : Kosovo
http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/may00/hed127.shtml
Defang the KLA
http://www.balkanpeace.org/library/picture/hackworth.html
Destabilizing the Balkans: US & Albanian Defense Cooperation in the 1990s
http://www.balkanpeace.org/rs/archive/mar01/rs126.shtml
Bin Laden in Kosovo
http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/april00/hed76.shtml
Bosnia Arrests Three Suspected Bin LadenÒ‘s Associates
http://www.balkanpeace.org/hed/archive/july01/hed3790.shtml
A Bosnian Village's Terrorist Ties; Links to U.S. Bomb Plot Arouse Concern About Enclave of Islamic Guerrillas
http://www.balkanpeace.org/wtb/wtb12.shtml
Bin Laden opens European terror base in Albania
http://www.balkanpeace.org/wtb/wtb08.html
US tackles Islamic militancy in Kosovo
http://www.balkanpeace.org/wtb/wtb06.html
US alarmed as Mujahidin join Kosovo rebels
http://www.balkanpeace.org/wtb/wtb05.html
From this we learn:
1. Osama bin Laden visited the Balkans on three occasions between 1994 and 1996.
2. Ayman Al-Zawahiri operated training camps and money-laundering and drug-trading networks throughout Albania, Kosovo, Macedonia, Bulgaria, Turkey and Bosnia.
3. Funding came partly from a front agency established in London in 1994.
4. Heroin trafficking through Kosovo helped to fund activity linked to al Qaeda and the Iranian Revolutionary Guard.
5. Osama bin Laden reportedly administered much of this heroin trade with the help of Russian mafia groups (the mainly Jewish Russian mafia – Aangirfan).
6. The Bosnian Embassy in Vienna issued a passport to bin Laden in 1993, according to various reports in the Yugoslav press at the time.
The reports add that bin Laden then visited a ‘terrorist’ camp in Zenica, Bosnia in 1994.
The Bosnian government denies all of this, but admits that some passport records have been lost.
7. In 1994, uranium was taken, by an al Qaeda operative, to the town of Hilat Koko, in Turkish-held northern Cyprus.
8. Cyprus, both north and south, were centres for money laundering by banks working for al Qaeda.
9. In 1995, Iranian arms came into Bosnia with the apparent tacit approval of the Clinton administration.
10. Bin Laden visited Albania in 1996 and 1997, according to the testimony of a French national, Claude Kader.
He recruited some Albanians to fight with the Kosovo Liberation Army in Kosovo (the Moslem KLA), according to the Paris-based Observatoire Geopolitique des Drogues.
11. The U.S. had a relationship with the KLA and used it to fight the Serbs.
The KLA received official NATO/U.S. arms and training support.
Europol (the European Police Organization based in The Hague) has reported on the connection between the KLA and international drug gangs.
For more than fifty years, the CIA and its friends have been employing militant Moslems to do their dirty work.
1. Before World war II, British intelligence used the Moslem Brotherhood against Britain’s German rivals in North Africa.
2. Around 1955, the CIA began to co-operate with the Moslem Brotherhood.
6. In 1979 the CIA was building up and arming the militant Moslem Mujahadeen in Afghanistan.
The idea was to lure Russia into Afghanistan. [Note of Editor: to make it seem that way. Since Bay of Pigs Cuba invasion, CIA and KGB always invade together, no matter which forces are used.]
(CRG — The CIA’s Intervention in Afghanistan)
Centre for Research on Globalisation[ home ] [ print version ]
According to this 1998 interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, the CIA's intervention in Afghanistan preceded the 1979 Soviet invasion. This decision of the Carter Administration in 1979 to intervene and destabilise Afghanistan is the root cause of Afghanistan's destruction as a nation.
M.C.
The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski,
President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser
Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
Posted at globalresearch.ca 15 October 2001
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen 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.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war?
Q: Some stirred-up Moslems? But it has been said and repeated Islamic fundamentalism represents a world menace today.
B: Nonsense! It is said that the West had a global policy in regard to Islam. That is stupid. There isn't a global Islam. Look at Islam in a rational manner and without demagoguery or emotion. It is the leading religion of the world with 1.5 billion followers. But what is there in common among Saudi Arabian fundamentalism, moderate Morocco, Pakistan militarism, Egyptian pro-Western or Central Asian secularism? Nothing more than what unites the Christian countries.
Translated from the French by Bill Blum
The URL of this article is:
http://www.globalresearch.ca/articles/BRZ110A.htmlCopyright, Le Nouvel Observateur and Bill Blum. For fair use only.
7. In 1991, the CIA and NATO used Al Qaeda to break up Yugoslavia.
Yugoslavia was a friend of Russia and was next door to a lot of oil wealth.
Moslems arrived in Bosnia from Afghanistan and other Moslem countries.
Clinton gave the ‘green light’ to Iran to arm the Bosnian Muslims.
Israel armed the Bosnian Serbs.
The idea was to foment conflict.
The Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA), which took control of the Balkan heroin trafficking routes, fought the Serbs.
The KLA, which had links to bin Laden, was trained and armed by the USA.
8. The CIA and its friends employed Moslem militants to create trouble for Russia in its province of Chechnya.
US intelligence helped fund and transport al-Qaeda into Chechnya in the early 1990s.
In Chechnya, the two main rebel leaders who came to power had been trained by the CIA in Afghanistan.
A war in Chechnya was planned in a secret meeting in 1996 attended by Osama bin Laden and officials of the Pakistani ISI.
In other words, the CIA was directing the war through the ISI.
US intelligence helped fund and transport al-Qaeda into Chechnya in the early 1990s.
9. In 2002, it was revealed that, “British intelligence paid large sums of money to an al-Qaeda cell in Libya in a doomed attempt to assassinate Colonel Gadaffi in 1996 and thwarted early attempts to bring Osama bin Laden to justice.”
Anas al-Liby, a Libyan al-Qaeda leader, “was given political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000 when he eluded a police raid on his house and fled abroad.”
