Al Qaeda: Pawns of CIA Insurrection from Libya to Yemen

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
April 3, 2011

After two weeks of imperialist attack, Libya is being mangled by al Qaeda terrorists, civil war, NATO air raids, cruise missiles, Predator drones, and C-130 gunships – all made possible by the CIA-backed al Qaeda rebels of Cyrenaica. US, British, French, and Dutch commandos have taken leadership of the rebel forces, and are arming them with modern weapons in flagrant violation of the arms embargo specified in UN Security Council resolution 1973. Al Qaeda is also stealing heavy weapons on its own, as the president of Chad has reported. The singing tomorrows of the fatuous US-UK color revolution rhetoric have dissolved, exposing the hideous reality of a brutal, cynical, imperialist drive to destroy the modern nation-state itself.

 

Rebel Triumvirate of Terror Rules Darna

According to the London Daily Telegraph of March 26, Darna (also transliterated as Derna or Darnah), a key city in the rebel heartland between Benghazi in Tobruk, is commanded by al-Hasidi, an al Qaeda terrorist controller who trained and hobnobbed with Osama bin Laden at the Khost terrorist training camp in Afghanistan.

Hasidi boasts of having sent 25 fighters to fight US and NATO forces in Afghanistan; one wonders how many they managed to kill. Hasidi was a US prisoner of war after being captured by the Pakistanis, but tells the Wall Street Journal of April 2 that he now hates the US only “less than 50%” hinting that Americans can redeem themselves by appeasing Al Qaeda with arms, money, political power, and diplomatic support. At his side in the city leadership is Sufian bin Kumu, Osama bin Laden’s chauffeur, another terrorist who was an inmate at Guantánamo Bay for six years. Also among the Darna city fathers is al-Barrani, a devoted member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which merged with Al Qaeda in 2007.

This gaggle of fanatics, psychotics, and criminals is billed by the CIA media as an effective ruling elite for the future democratic governance of Libya. In reality, the Benghazi rebel council, heavily larded with al Qaeda terrorists, could only preside over the descent of the country into a chaos of tribalism, warlords, and criminal syndicates which would spell the end of civilization itself in the area. Precisely this appears to be the goal of US policy, and not just in Libya.

 

Darna, Northeast Libya: the World Capital of Terrorist Recruitment

Nor are these persons atypical. A December 2007 study by the US Military Academy at West Point showed that Libya (population 7 million) provided 20% of all Al Qaeda fighters crossing the Syrian border into Iraq at that time.

This same city of Darna (population about 60,000) was the single greatest center of terrorist recruitment anywhere in the world, edging out Riyadh, Saudi Arabia (population 4.5 million); the rebel capital of Benghazi also placed in the top four. Libya sent twice as many terrorists into Iraq per capita as did Saudi Arabia, and 85% of the Libyans who indicated a specialty chose that of suicide bomber.

The London Economist, BBC Newsnight, and an increasing number of pro-Obama warmonger quackademics are attempting to obscure these plain facts. These are now mellow, pluralist, democratic terrorists, they argue. The CIA limited hangout operation known as Wikileaks has helpfully provided a few doctored cables purporting to show that it was really US support of Qaddafi that drove these fanatics into despair and terrorism — which is also part of the CIA line. On April 1, the Benghazi rebels themselves used the media presence at Friday prayers to hold up signs denying that the rebellion is run by Al Qaeda. If so, let them oust the terror triumvirate of Darna, and reveal the names of the dozen or more anonymous members of the rebel council who are suspected of belonging to Al Qaeda.

Hillary Clinton concedes she has no “100% insight” into the rebels, and US Admiral Stavridis, the NATO commander, has told the Senate Armed Services Committee that he sees only “flickers” of Al Qaeda. In truth, the central role of Al Qaeda is no flicker, but is as bright as the noonday sun over the Mediterranean

 

Four Plagues of Libya

The Libyan insurrection has four components. The first is provided by the British, and consists of the monarchist and racist Harabi and Obeidat tribes of the Benghazi-Darna-Tobruk corridor, whose traditional culture is that of the obscurantist Senussi Order. During the resistance to Italian colonialism, these tribes allied with the British and were rewarded by seeing the head of the Senussi Order placed on the throne in the person of King Idris I, overthrown by Qaddafi in 1968.

Deprived of their role as the monarchist ruling class, these tribes hate the black or dark-skinned pro-Qaddafi Fezzan tribes of southwest Libya, and this has fed into the lynching and massacre of many black Africans from Chad, Mali, and Sudan working in Libya, which the western media have ignored. Enan Obeidi, the woman who claims she was raped by Qaddafi forces, is an Obeidat from Benghazi, and this puts her story into question. For the media, she is a new edition of the Kuwait incubator babies hoax of 1990, made to order to whip up war hysteria against Qaddafi.

Two ingredients come from the CIA. These are Al Qaeda itself, founded as the CIA’s own Arab Legion against the USSR by then CIA deputy director Robert Gates – the current Defense Secretary– in Afghanistan in 1981-82. Another CIA ingredient is the Libyan National Salvation Front, based first in Sudan and then in Northern Virginia, which is supposedly sending the CIA asset Khalifa Hifter to lead the rebel military, most likely also to cover the presence of the Al Qaeda types.

A fourth component is contributed by the French, who arranged the defection of top Qaddafi associate Nouri Mesmari last fall, as reported by Maghreb Confidential. A clique of generals around Mesmari helped foment the military mutinies against Qaddafi in northeast Libya.

And Libya is not unique. In Yemen, al Qaeda operatives are decisive components of the CIA putsch attempt against President Saleh, which US is promoting in order to fragment Yemen into two or more rump states. Here the Al Qaeda leader is al-Shihri, a Saudi who was freed along with several other Guantánamo inmates and sent to Yemen by the Bush administration, allegedly as a humanitarian gesture, but in reality to provide leadership for the coming destabilization. Also in Yemen is the American-born Anwar Awlaki, known in the trade as Awlaki the CIA lackey, an obvious US double agent who has been used to give the Al Qaeda seal of approval to dozens of terrorists including the Fort Dix six, Major Hasan of Fort Hood, and Mutallab of Nigeria, the Christmas 2009 underwear bomber.

In Syria, the CIA goal is to deprive Iran of an ally, to isolate Hezbollah, to oust Russia from the Tartus naval station, and to build the power of the Muslim Brotherhood, which is the principal force promoting the insurrection so far.

 

Demand that the State Department Explain Why the US is Arming al Qaeda Terrorists

Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan has rightly warned against the NATO policy of arming the Libyan rebels, since this would be “conducive to terrorism.” Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has also condemned any NATO arming of the rebels. Pope Benedict XVI’s call for a cease-fire goes in the same direction.

Russia, Turkey, China, and other governments must now formally demand explanations from the State Department as to why the US is providing the most dangerous international terrorists with modern weapons and training, while proposing to award them large chunks of the $32 billion of frozen Libyan government assets, plus a share in coming oil revenues. This is enough to make the Mediterranean, the Arab world, and southern Europe boil over with refugees, piracy, mayhem, and war.

Under Bush and Cheney, the alleged presence of Al Qaeda was used as a pretext for bombings and invasions. Under Obama, an overstretched and moribund US-UK imperialism is using al Qaeda as its own irregular infantry in the effort to harass and cripple the nation-states of the world, causing them to disintegrate into a tribal, sectarian, criminal, and warlord chaos. In the current phase, al Qaeda has resumed its original status as CIA guerrillas. As a result, civilization itself is threatened across vast areas of the globe. If you are skeptical, just take a look at the city council of Darna, Libya.