Spain Busts Up Al Qaeda Network, Highlighting Western Schizophrenia

The BBC is reporting this morning that Spain has raided an Al Qaeda recruiting network responsible for sending fighters to Syria. The network is based in the Spanish North African enclave of Ceuta and the Moroccan city of Fnideq.

This highlights the schizophrenia of the West regarding Syria. On the one hand there is an extensive anti-terrorism infrastructure built up over the last decade-plus to combat Al Qaeda and its affiliates, while on the other we are actively working to enhance terrorist networks in a catastrophic quest to collapse the sovereign nation of Syria. In fact, Secretary of State John Kerry is in Qatar today to huddle with the Gulf Arab monarchies at the forefront of the effort to export jihad to Syria. (An interesting story on the Syrian Arab News Agency from yesterday alleges, based on documentary evidence, that Saudi Arabia is offering a general amnesty for criminals to fight in Syria.)

Last weekend on the Counterpunch web site, Franklin Lamb published a story taking the temperature on Capitol Hill. He interviewed his Congressional-staffer contacts and the opinion was that a no-fly zone was an inevitability, and with a no-fly zone comes all-out war. So the prevailing wisdom was that shortly, possibly a matter of months, the United States would be in a full-scale military conflict with Syria.

Fox is reporting this morning that a bipartisan group of senators led by Kentucky's Rand Paul is trying to block Obama from sending military aid to the rebels.

Rick Gladstone has a story in the New York Times this morning about the Philippines threatening to withdraw its peacekeepers from the Golan Heights unless they are supplied with heavy weapons, antitank and antiaircraft guns, by the United Nations. The Times over the last several days has reduced its coverage of the Syrian civil war.

Patrick Cockburn has a story in The Independent from a couple days back that is worth checking out. He says that Damascus is more peaceful today than it was six months ago. "Assad's forces have a tight grip on 13 out of 14 provincial capitals and increasingly hold the main roads between them." The population is tired of war and have no sympathy for the rebels who shoot children and eat the hearts of fallen soldiers. Cockburn says the government's strategy seems to be a slow encirclement of the rebels. It seems to be working.

I think it's already obvious to anyone paying attention that the West is engaging in an obscenity by supporting the fatwas of Wahhabi clerics. Soon, when the only rebel military strategy left will be suicide attacks, this obscenity will be even more glaring.

When the Money Disappears So Does Karzai

The work week began Monday with Matthew Rosenberg's frontpage story detailing the CIA's plying of Afghan quisling Hamid Karzai with countless bags of cash (at one point we were in competition with Iran) -- a practice stretching back to the foundation of the current state of Afghanistan. Warlords were paid to fight the Taliban. Rosenberg's story is not merely a revelation of corrupt practices; it provides insight into the very nature of our mission in Afghanistan, which now stands revealed as a sham. As soon as the money dries up Karzai's government will disappear (either that or become the proxy of another foreign power willing to foot the bill).

It's been interesting to gauge the reaction to this story, which as far as I can tell has been pretty close to zero. The New York Times followed up Rosenberg's frontpage story Monday with a reaction piece -- Karzai in Finland thanking the U.S. for the money -- the next day also written by Rosenberg. Wednesday the Times published an unsigned editorial asking Congress to demand an explanation from the CIA. Mark Steel had a story, "Look on the bright side: There’s a roaring heroin trade in Afghanistan, and it's all thanks to us," in yesterday's Independent. And that's about it. (Kevin Mahken has a short piece in the New Republic pointing out that this is the way things have been done throughout history.)

Today the New York Times under a "Cash for Karzai: A C.I.A. Caper" header publishes several good letters, one of which is from a former Foreign Service officer:

Your report is old news, albeit dramatic and in flagrante delicto. 

As a Foreign Service officer for three decades, I observed up close the contradiction between C.I.A. officers, usually under embassy cover, paying cash for access and secrets while the rest of us did it by charm alone. 

It was particularly disheartening in post-independence Africa of the 1960s, when idealism still prevailed and the Agency for International Development was charged with building democracy while the Central Intelligence Agency rushed to outbid the French, the Russians and others to corrupt new and vulnerable African leaders. 

Today, we have the demeaning spectacle of agency bag men vying with the Iranians to bestow briefcases bulging with cash on the notably corrupt Afghan president, Hamid Karzai. 

This is occurring while American servicemen and women are still fighting and dying in Afghanistan, and while we still have the temerity to talk about bringing democracy to that benighted land. 

RICHARD L. JACKSON
Wellington, Fla., April 29, 2013

Our imperial project in Afghanistan is irredeemable. Let's hope that this is so widely acknowledged that the scheduled troop withdrawal proceeds according to plan.