Operation Cyclone never ended: The history of the West’s support for Islamist extremists
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.
https://www.redressonline.com/2019/03/operation-cyclone-never-ended-the-history-of-the-wests-support-for-islamist-extremists/