766 Devil's Game: US & Israel promoted Islamists to bring down USSR & Secular Arab foes

Devil's Game: US & Israel promoted Islamists to bring down USSR &
Secular Arab foes

Newsletter published on 17 September 2015

(1) Religion and Empire
(2) Visas for Al-Qaeda, by former diplomat J. Michael Springmann
(3) Visas for Al-Qaeda - Customer Reviews on Amazon
(4) Devil's Game: US & Israel unleashed Fundamentalist Islam - Robert
Dreyfuss
(5) US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq - Seumas Milne in The
Guardian
(6) ISIS leader Al Baghdadi trained by Mossad - Snowden, citing NSA
Documents
(7) Al-Baghdadi trained by Mossad; real name is Elliot Shimon, the son
of Jewish parents
(8) Australian IS jihadist is actually an American Jew named Joshua Ryne
Goldberg
(9) "When Islam conquers Australia, every single Jew will be slaughtered
like the filthy cockroaches that they are" - Australi Witness (actually
a Jew named Joshua Ryne Goldberg)
(10) ISIS was created in US prisons in Iraq
(11) Prisoners wrote each other’s telephone numbers on the inside of
their boxer shorts

(1) Religion and Empire - by Peter Myers, September 17, 2015

The CIA used Religion to bring down the Soviet Union. The Catholic
religion in Poland, with the help of Pope John Paul II and Zbigniew
Brzezinski (a Pole, Secretary of State uder Carter). The Jewish
religion, via Israel and the Jewish Lobby. And Islam, via the
Fundamentalists who seek a new Caliphate.

Afghanistan was the first successful case - successful in the sense that
the Soviet Union was defeated there. But what took its place was a bunch
of warlords and, later, Islamic Fundamentalists.

The US later occupied the country in an attempt to crush those Islamists.

It might claim to have been caught out, not intending to have a
Communist regime replaced by an Islamicist one. But the same process has
since happened in Iraq and Libya, and is under way in Syria.

The CIA allies with Al Quaeda, ISIS and the like to oust governments it
dislikes, and then opposes those same Islamists once they are in power.

The chaos and the millions of refugees are evidence that the secular
regimes were preferable to their successors. By the same logic, Assad is
preferable for Syria. Yet Russia's recent moves to bolster Assad have
been opposed by the US Government - eg they tried to block the flight
path for Russian planes. Iran and Iraq, however, agreed to Russian use
of their airspace. The incident shows that the removal of Assad is still
the prime American aim, even if it means the triumph of IS.

(2) Visas for Al-Qaeda, by former diplomat J. Michael Springmann

Date: Wed, 16 Sep 2015 11:31:51 +0530 Subject: [shamireaders] Fwd: Visas
for Al-Qaeda, Part 1: A Sordid Tale-J. Michael Springmann-16 September 2015

http://vijayvaani.com/ArticleDisplay.aspx?aid=3708
http://whowhatwhy.org/2015/09/09/VISAS-FOR-AL-QAEDA-PART-1-A-SORDID-TALE/

Visas for Al-Qaeda, Part 1: A Sordid Tale

by J. Michael Springmann

on 16 Sep 2015

Enter the Pawn

Having just joined the “real” Foreign Service, I was assigned to Jeddah.
There, I learned the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia was a mysterious and exotic
place — but nowhere near as exotic and mysterious as the American
consulate general on Palestine Road.

Upon arrival, I found, as a new visa officer, I was expected to winnow
more than one hundred applications a day, separating them into
“issuances,” “refusals,” and what turned out to be “free passes for CIA
agents.”

However, none of the clean-cut young fellows at the consulate, or even
the pudgy, “been around too many blocks” types, bothered to clue me in
on this special class of applicants.

One day, Eric Qualkenbush, the CIA Base Chief, stopped me while I was
walking on the consulate’s huge compound. He had a request. Could I
issue a visa to one of his agents, an Iranian whose family owned an
Oriental rug store? Eric said, “Mike, make it look good (wink, wink). We
want him in Washington for consultations.”

Flabbergasted, I said, “Sure.” Up to that point, I had had almost a
daily battle with Jay Freres, the Consul General, along with other CIA
officials, who demanded visas for peculiar people, that is, people whom
law and regulation required me to refuse.

I also had running fights with visa applicants who told me to approve
their paperwork or they would complain to Freres and have him overrule me.

Why, I wondered, did Qualkenbush explain what was coming? And why didn’t
he tip me the wink about the others, instead of leaving me to fight
continued violations of rule and directive all by myself?

If they followed law and regulation, and resisted illegal pressure to
overlook the people who had no real reason for traveling to the United
States, they “weren’t with the program” and could easily be dismissed as
“incompetent.”

I was even more flummoxed when Eric’s agent appeared in line before me
while I was on my stool behind the visa section’s armored window. Secure
in my industrial-strength cinderblock office, I went through the interview:

Memo on company letterhead explaining trip and customers to be visited?
Check. Properly filled out visa application form DS-156? Check. Clean
passport with no hidden notations of previous travel refusals? Check.
Coherent, comprehensive, clear account of travel purpose? Check.
Previous US visa stamps? Check. Appropriate responses to my questions
about proposed journey? Check. I issued the visa and wished I had more
applicants like him. And yet …

I had heard in Washington about all sorts of abnormal problems tied to
visas in Jeddah. None of it made sense at the time, but the office
atmosphere after my arrival was increasingly poisonous as I invoked the
Immigration and Nationality Act, and the Foreign Affairs Manual in
preventing scruffy types from apparently trying to emigrate to the
United States.

Despite my questioning people in the office, I began to suspect that
something wasn’t quite right. I knew it wasn’t right when the State
Department later fired me without explanation and then stonewalled my
efforts to learn why.

The following story is what I learned about what was really happening in
Jeddah, how I got there, and the dreadful consequences of what I learned
to be American policy.

The Watchdog That Did Not Bark

First, the Consular Section’s job was to secure visas for CIA agents,
i.e., foreigners recruited by American case officers. The Department of
State and the Central Intelligence Agency collaborated on sending
ignorant pawns to Jeddah, a place that was handling about forty-five
thousand visa applications annually. If they processed the paperwork
like automatons and didn’t ask awkward questions about the applicants,
they kept their jobs.

If they followed law and regulation, and resisted illegal pressure to
overlook the people who had no real reason for traveling to the United
States, they “weren’t with the program” and could easily be dismissed as
“incompetent.”

They worked with the American intelligence services and the State
Department to destabilize governments the United States opposed. While
it’s no secret, most knowledgeable people still refuse to talk about
this agenda.

Second, the Department of State already had a watchdog in place to
prevent this type of problem: the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. From
its website:

D[iplomatic]S[ecurity] works with the Bureau of Consular Affairs on
cases involving allegations of corrupt American Embassy employees,
fraudulent document vendors, and the use of visas by terrorists, and
those smuggling and trafficking drugs and human beings.

Passport and visa crimes are federal offenses punishable by up to 10
years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The maximum prison sentence is
increased to 15 years if the offense is connected to drug trafficking,
and to 20 years if connected to terrorism.

So who was committing these violations, and what were they doing? And
why wasn’t the watchdog watching? As I later learned to my dismay, the
visa applicants were recruits for the war in Afghanistan against the
Soviet Union’s armed forces.

Further, as time went by, the fighters, trained in the United States,
went on to other battlefields: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.

They worked with the American intelligence services and the State
Department to destabilize governments the United States opposed. While
it’s no secret, most knowledgeable people still refuse to talk about
this agenda.

What Was That All About?

In 1986, the introductory class for new Foreign Service officers
consisted of weeks of sitting through dreadfully boring and generally
useless lectures. At the graduation session, class members received
their orders, along with a small flag of their country of assignment.
Mine was the green flag of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. I was to be a
consular officer in Jeddah on that country’s west coast.

I was astonished. When I made discreet inquiry of John Tkacik as to how
I ended up there, he replied that he thought I had bid on the assignment
since I appeared so happy at the ceremony. I later contacted one of our
lecturers.

My interlocutor told me that the State Department wanted someone a
little older than the average junior officer (I was forty-one) for the
Jeddah position, and someone with my experience at the Commerce
Department because Jeddah was a hub of mercantile activity. This
rationale left me with more questions than answers.

In accordance with Foreign Service practice, I wrote to the American
Ambassador, Walter Cutler, in Riyadh and told him of my delight in
joining his official family. I sent a similar letter to Jay Philip
Freres, the American Consul General in Jeddah at the time.

I then went on to Arabic language class and engaged in regional and
consular studies at the Foreign Service Institute (FSI), the educational
arm of the State Department in Washington. Surprisingly, I got a call
one day from a desk officer — those in Washington who follow political,
economic, and social affairs in a country — for Saudi Arabia.

Ambassador Cutler was in town, and he invited me to meet with him. I
expected it to be a five-minute “Hello and good-bye” session. Instead,
Cutler kept me for about forty-five minutes, telling me the problems
Greta Holtz, my predecessor, had created for our embassy in Riyadh.

Visas were being denied to servants of rich Saudi women who, after all,
couldn’t travel to the United States without their entourage of
hairdressers, seamstresses, and other factotums.

I sat there and listened and wondered at this report. Clearly, Cutler
was conveying some message, but for the life of me, I could not puzzle
it out. Afterward, I spoke to the desk officer, who had been there with
me during the talk, asking what that meeting was really all about. His
response was that he didn’t know, saying that Cutler (who had previously
been ambassador to Zaire and Tunisia) was “just a queer duck.”

Years later, Cutler, then head of Meridian House, a nonprofit that
promotes international understanding, flatly refused to talk to me about
Jeddah. Despite his silence, he knew full well what had been going on.

In a discussion about recruits for the Afghan war in Robert Dreyfuss’s
Devil’s Game, How the US Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam, Cutler is
quoted as saying, “Where I was, nobody was looking ahead at what would
happen to those unemployed freedom fighters.”

Contrary to what Cutler told me and, as I learned later, many of
Jeddah’s visa applicants were mujahideen recruits, alleged “freedom
fighters — not servants of rich Saudi women.

I began asking around about Cutler’s odd remarks on visas in Jeddah.
Heeding the advice of a consular officer that anything out of the
ordinary should be questioned as a source of potential trouble, I
contacted Ellen Goff in the Executive Office for the Bureau of Near
Eastern Affairs (NEA/EX). She told me that, yes, she had heard stories
about visa problems in Jeddah, but she had no details on the subject.

Still puzzled and confused, I went off to Jeddah in September 1987. I
later learned that I had been assigned to a CIA post, another unpleasant
surprise. Most of the American officers and staff did not work for the
State Department, but instead for the Agency (the CIA, or “Langley” for
the location of the CIA in Virginia), or the National Security Agency (NSA).

A Cover Story?

Welcomed with open arms by Jay Freres, the Consul General — identified
by the German journalist Julius Mader as a CIA official — and Henry
Ensher, the political officer, I was told I was an improvement over
Greta Holtz, whom they alleged had had terrible problems at the consulate.

Years later, I began to realize that this was more a cover story than
anything else — especially since my visa refusal rate was within five
percentage points of hers.

According to one biography, Holtz had strong ties to the intelligence
services, having previously worked at the Defense Intelligence Agency
(DIA), and later receiving the Christopher Award from the CIA.

For someone who created such problems for our embassy in Riyadh, Greta
Holtz has done extremely well for herself, moving steadily up the
promotion ladder. President Barack Obama named her Ambassador to Oman in
September 2012. Her new official biography strangely omits her DIA
service, saying just that she worked in the NATO policy office at the
Defense Department. When in Washington, DC, she lives in a $2.4 million
house in nearby Potomac, Maryland.

Requests, Demands, Threats

Later on, during my service in Jeddah, I began getting referrals from
Freres, Ensher, and others, such as Paul Arvid Tveit — a commercial
officer listed in namebase.org (no longer available due to hackers) as a
CIA official. Initially, I was approached diffidently with the caveat
that, while according to law and regulation, I had the final decision,
they really wanted visas for their contacts.

While no example springs to mind, the referrals, for the most part, were
unremarkable. Later, after I had begun questioning the credentials of
many applicants because they lacked ties to Saudi Arabia or their own
country, the requests became demands. Then, they became threats.

(3) Visas for Al-Qaeda - Customer Reviews on Amazon

http://www.amazon.com.au/Visas-Al-Qaeda-Handouts-Insiders-ebook/dp/B00TEC9XVM

Visas for Al Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World : An Insider's View

by J. Springmann

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

    Untruth, Injustice and the American Way

5.0 out of 5 stars

27 March 2015

By J. L. Zorn

Having lived in Jeddah from 1983 through 1988 and knowing Mr. Springmann
and many of the people he names in his book during this period, I can
fully accept everything he says as the "truth and nothing but the
truth". His book is not only timely but sadly puts another nail into the
idea that the United States of America is a Constitutional Republic.
Unfortunately we have become a nation run by Executive Orders and Agency
Regulations for the benefit of the few. This book confirms how corrupt
all branches of the U.S. Government have become and how far our elected
and unelected government officials have strayed from their oath to
"support and defend the CONSTITUTION against all enemies foreign or
domestic". They commit Treason on a daily basis while the American
public permits it to happen, preferring to enjoy government provided
bread and circuses. Mr. Springmann's book is a wake up call for all
Americans to say enough is enough. Time is running out on the "American
Empire". It is time to stop the corruption, regain our freedom and take
back our lives. God bless and thank you Michael for giving us another
reason to act. Semper Fi.

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars

6 July 2015

By Timothy N.

As someone who is a source in Mike Springmann's book you won't be
surprized that I found the book to be intelligently written and very
credible. As a Member of the US Foreign Service I also served in the
American Consulate General in Jeddah, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia - but at a
different time (1994-95) and did not know him until I started speaking
in venues like the National Press Club in 1996. Mike attended one
seminar and I was amazed to discover how similar our experiences as
diplomats had been, given that a number of the characters had changed
and that we had served in professionally different sections and would,
probably, even have had little contact if we had served in the same
place at the same time. Speaking as a Geographer, I think that the
independence and similarity of our perspectives of the US Mission in the
KSA lends amplification, verification and credibility to Mike's reports
and disclosures - certainly there are few other ways the American
Congress and our people can learn reliable facts about these matters.
Hopefully, the media will find this book and use it as reference in its
KSA, NSA, and CIA narratives and Congress will wake up to the fact that
there is real treachery in the State Department's Middle East workings...

(4) Devil's Game: US & Israel unleashed Fundamentalist Islam - Robert
Dreyfuss

http://www.amazon.com/Devils-Game-Unleash-Fundamentalist-American/dp/0805081372

73 of 82 people found the following review helpful

Devil's Game: How the United States Helped Unleash Fundamentalist Islam

by Robert Dreyfuss

October 3, 2006

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

By Gianmarco Manzione on March 7, 2006

Anyone interested in learning about the true dynamics behind Hamas's
reportedly "shocking" victory in recent Palestinian elections may want
to pursue this book's many stirring revelations about Hamas's roots.
Dreyfuss reports that Israeli intelligence--particularly the Mossad--not
only endorsed but participated in the creation and development of Hamas
as an organization that could be used to defeat the PLO. "In the early
1980s", Dreyfuss writes, "Israel supported the Islamists on several
fronts. It was, of course, supporting the Gaza and West Bank Islamists
that, in 1987, would found Hamas . . . They were trying to defeat Arab
nationalism with Muslim zealots." Hamas's recent electoral victory was
hardly the surprise that mainstream media reported it to be. In reality,
it was a rather predictable response to a gradual increase in support
for Hamas over recent years inspired by the marginalization of Arafat
and the PLO by Bush and Sharon (conspicuously absent from Dreyfuss's
analysis, however, is that corruption within the Fatah party also
contributed to Hamas's surge in popularity). As Dreyfuss's book
documents, "in 1996, only 15 percent of Palestinians backed the
Islamists", but, by 2002, that support had risen to 42 percent.

Contrary to what some may think, "Devil's Game" helps readers understand
that Islamic fundamentalists are adamantly opposed to Arab nationalist
movements such as Arafat's PLO on religious grounds. This includes
opposition to the creation of a Palestinian state, a concept of far less
importance to Islamists than their agenda of "first Islamizing Palestine
and the Arab world." Admittedly, one cannot help but wonder whether
Dreyfuss shoots himself in the foot here, given that a major contention
of his introduction is that peace between Palestinians and Israelis
would end much of the current strife between east and west. Dreyfuss's
analysis opens the door to another possibility--though apparently
without the author's comprehension: perhaps Islamist assertions that
tensions between Israel and Palestinians motivates their campaign of
terror is actually a front designed to perpetuate their fundamentalist
indoctrination of the region. The PLO's association with movements to
"modernize" the Arab world by allowing for a comparatively more secular
society provoked the bitter and vengeful disdain of Islamists. While the
PLO sought to "secularize" The Islamic University in Gaza, for example,
the Muslim Brotherhood from which Hamas emerged fought violently to
"preserve its Islamist character".

Reading Dreyfuss's book within the context of Hamas's recent triumph
further enhances the allure of this absorbing read. It becomes
especially amusing, for instance, to listen to Israeli officials
denounce Hamas as a terrorist organization in the wake of their recent
democratic victory--as if they didn't know what Hamas was back when they
found it convenient to shake hands with them. Israeli officials continue
to brilliantly manipulate Islamists to their advantage, as evidenced by
Sharon's strategically-timed visit to the Haram al-Sharif/Temple Mount
in 2000 just when a "comprehensive deal" was about to be achieved
between Barak, Arafat and Clinton. The temple visit was calculated to
destroy these negotiations by inciting Islamists into violence, and it
worked with stunning and terrifying success.

The CIA translated the Islamists' violent resistance to nationalism in
the Arab world as vehement anti-communism that could be used to stave
off the USSR's influence in the region. The U.S. routinely supported
Islamist movements from the early stages of the Cold War era on into
much more recent years, forging relationships with any fundamentalist
group or leader that American intelligence viewed as a tool against
communism, despite knowledge of their involvement in terrorism or human
rights abuses. The cataclysmic flaw in this policy became especially
apparent after the U.S. left Afghan freedom fighters out to dry when the
USSR withdrew from battle there. An entire force of CIA-trained
Jihadists was abandoned without any regard for where they would invest
their acquired skills, leaving a wasteland of warlords to reign over an
Afghanistan that would soon give birth to the Taliban and bin-Laden's
Al-Qaeda organization, which absorbed much of the suddenly unemployed
freedom fighters into a militantly anti-western army whose influence
spread across many nations. "We knew exactly who these people were, and
what their organizations were like, and we didn't care" says a Rand
corporation expert on political Islam. While Dreyfuss's notably balanced
investigation into this topic tends not to explicitly link 9/11 to the
history of American policy in the mid-east, it is fairly difficult for
the reasonable reader to conclude otherwise. Even Dreyfuss cannot help
but indulge in the ominous observation that the consequences of this
environment "would become painfully obvious on September 11, 2001." Such
a conclusion is consistent with the kind of "blowback" which, as
Dreyfuss's narrative suggests, was an inevitable consequence of American
ignorance, avarice, arrogance and fear.

While Dreyfuss consistently characterizes America's approach to
fundamental Islamist movements as a naive policy based on an ignorant
underestimation of the fundamentalist movement, the boundless strategic
and corporate advantage behind Western and Israeli support for Islamic
fundamentalism over the past 60 years suggests that they knew exactly
what they were doing and simply did not care about possible
consequences. It may not be a matter of ignorance, but rather a matter
of willful near-sightedness without any regard for future implications
of current policies. Such "near-sightedness" appears to have been
motivated in no small part by an American Cold War strategy that favored
the interests of international corporations in the Arab world, including
funds for the dissemination of Islamist propaganda and visits to
Eisenhower's Oval Office by Muslim fundamentalist organizer and likely
U.S. intelligence agent Said Ramadan, provided by such companies as
Aramco, Exxon, Mobil, Texaco, U.S. Airlines, Pan Am, TWA and Chevron.
You do the math.

Two perfect--if not essential--companion pieces to Dreyfuss's excellent
book are Chalmers Johnson's "Blowback" and "the Sorrows of Empire",
which further explore the motives behind American exploits in the
mid-east while documenting their tragic ramifications for global stability.

26 of 30 people found the following review helpful

Thought-Provoking!

By Loyd E. Eskildson on September 17, 2006

Devil's Game" is an account of our efforts over six decades to cultivate
the Islamic right in an effort to dominate the Middle East. Dreyfuss
contends that this is greatly to blame for the emergence of Islamist
terrorism in the 1990s.

In the 1950s, the enemy was not only Moscow, but also Third World
emerging nationalists in Egypt and Iran. Thus, the CIA tried to
overthrow Nassar, despite his immense popularity, because of his
independence vs. the Cold War, and worked with the Muslim Brotherhood -
a member even tried to assassinate Nassar. Meanwhile, in Iran the CIA
got the most political ayatollahs to support an overthrow of the elected
government (it had nationalized oil assets) and restore the Shah (the
U.S. got 40% of oil rights in return); what was not recognized at the
time was the key importance of a young ayatollah involved - Khomeini's
mentor, as well as Khomeini himself. In the '60s Arab socialism spread
from Egypt to Algeria, Syria, Iraq, and Palestine. To counteract this
seeming threat the U.S. joined with Saudi Arabia to export its Wahhabi
religious right and Muslim Brotherhood factions. Even after the Iranian
revolution of '79, the U.S. failed to recognize that Islamism was a
dangerous force.

Carter's inauguration alarmed the Shah and encouraged Iranian opposition
groups - both due to U.S. pressures and memories of Kennedy's earlier
thoughts of replacing the Shah with a less authoritarian regime. Sensing
blood the clergy began to mobilize the wealthy landed population against
land reform, the Shah was overthrown, and soon we were in the midst of
the 444-day hostage crisis.

Dreyfuss's most stunning account, however, involves the CIA's assistance
to Afghan rebels PRIOR to the Soviet's invasion, and that it was
INTENDED to provoke that reaction. Then, to help insure that the Soviet
military was then bled to death, the CIA helped train insurgents, sent
billions to Pakistan for allocation to insurgents, and even allowed
recruiting within the U.S. The Afghanistan insurgency also led to the
development of strong funding from private sources within Saudi Arabia,
as well as the government's matching U.S. support. Regan's CIA Director
Casey then got Saudi Arabia to increase oil production, driving prices
down from $28/barrel to $10 - effectively shutting off Russia's source
of foreign currency. Finally, Casey pushed the Saudi-Pakistan alliance
to launch propaganda, sabotage, and guerilla activity into the Soviet
Union's Muslim republics (a dangerous tactic, to say the least - could
have led to retaliation against Pakistan). During the multi-year war,
another long-term result was that most Afghan moderate leaders were killed.

Dreyfuss concludes that only by rapidly withdrawing from Iraq and
Afghanistan, reducing our reliance on the Gulf, and reversing U.S.
support for Israel can the U.S. undercut the resentment and hatred
fueling Islamism.

9 of 10 people found the following review helpful

Shows that playing with fire is not a good idea

By William Podmore on February 27, 2008

Robert Dreyfuss, an American journalist who covers national security for
Rolling Stone magazine, has written a splendid book, part of the very
useful American Empire Project. He shows how the US state has followed
the British Empire's example of funding and backing right-wing
fundamentalist Islamic activist groups to defeat Arab nationalism.

 From 1885 on, the British state fostered a pan-Islamic alliance against
Russia and the Ottoman Empire. It also backed Ibn Saud, leading to the
creation of Saudi Arabia, the Hashemites, who became kings of Iraq and
Transjordan, the Muslim Brotherhood, an Islamic fundamentalist party,
and Haj Amin, the mufti of Jerusalem.

After World War Two, the US state took over Britain's role. In the 1950s
it used the Muslim Brotherhood against President Nasser of Egypt and
Prime Minister Mossadegh of Iran. From 1957 on, it allied with Saudi
Arabia, whose money funded Islamist banks and madrassas across the
world. In the 1970s, the US state used fundamentalists in Jordan and
Israel against Syria and the PLO. From 1973 on, it funded the mujehadin
in Afghanistan, including Osama bin Laden.

Dreyfuss shows that Al Qa'ida is not an existential threat to the USA.
It has no access to weapons of mass destruction and since 9/11 it has
not fired a shot in the USA. Bush inflated the threat from Al Qa'ida to
create a pretext for US expansion into the Middle East and Central Asia.
Dreyfuss argues that the US state could have destroyed Al Qa'ida without
attacking Afghanistan and Iraq. He maintains that the war on terror was
the wrong response to 9/11. It has not led to democracy or security but
to tyranny, war and reaction.

The US state is now supporting Iraq's Islamists and still backs the
feudal autocracy of Saudi Arabia. As usual, it is backing the worst
people in every country, and the worst people back it. Instead, we need
to back a Palestinian state and get the USA to withdraw its military
presence from the Middle East.

(5) US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and Iraq - Seumas Milne in The
Guardian

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq

Now the truth emerges: how the US fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria and
Iraq

Seumas Milne

The sectarian terror group won’t be defeated by the western states that
incubated it in the first place

Thursday 4 June 2015 05.56 AEST Last modified on Thursday 4 June 2015
20.37 AEST

  The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by
George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On
Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of
terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence
had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with
supporting.

The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the
intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial
would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of
evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to
the armed Syrian opposition.

That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the
government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training,
logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”.
Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line”
of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012
after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.

Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what
ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too
much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate
was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a
fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the
occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal
invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder
on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is
that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are
tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at
the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back
in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian
terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This
was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and Syrian territory and
proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.

The campaign isn’t going well. Last month, Isis rolled into the Iraqi
city of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border
its forces conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida’s official
franchise, the Nusra Front, has also been making gains in Syria.

Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was
going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian
casualties, and claim significant successes. Privately, officials say
they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian
war and risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently
declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012,
which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a
“Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled
Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at
the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida
in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces
driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries,
the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to
take control of eastern Syria.

Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared
Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly
what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate
the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia
expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria

Which is pretty well exactly what happened two years later. The report
isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted and there are ambiguities
in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the
Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren’t only supporting and
arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian
groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of
“Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a
Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.

That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its
Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president,
Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq
until the US and Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the
existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider
drive to maintain western control.

The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners and posting
atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in
the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and western habit
of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes
back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan,
which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.

It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by
General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian
death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011
in the Nato-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control
of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.

In reality, US and western policy in the conflagration that is now the
Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule.
American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria,
and mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran
against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign
against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US
policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq and Syria fit such an
approach perfectly.

What’s clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the
same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or
whose open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since.
Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought
only destruction and division. It’s the people of the region who can
cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.

(6) ISIS leader Al Baghdadi was trained by Mossad - Snowden, citing NSA
Documents

http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-leader-abu-bakr-al-baghdadi-trained-by-israeli-Mossad-nsa-documents-reveal/5391593

ISIS Leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi Trained by Israeli Mossad, NSA
Documents Reveal

By Gulf Daily News

Global Research, July 16, 2014

The former employee at US National Security Agency (NSA), Edward
Snowden, has revealed that the British and American intelligence and the
Mossad worked together to create the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS).

Snowden said intelligence services of three countries created a
terrorist organisation that is able to attract all extremists of the
world to one place, using a strategy called “the hornet’s nest”.

NSA documents refer to recent implementation of the hornet’s nest to
protect the Zionist entity by creating religious and Islamic slogans.

According to documents released by Snowden, “The only solution for the
protection of the Jewish state “is to create an enemy near its borders”.

Leaks revealed that ISIS leader and cleric Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi took
intensive military training for a whole year in the hands of Mossad,
besides courses in theology and the art of speech.

(7) Al-Baghdadi trained by Mossad; real name is Elliot Shimon, the son
of Jewish parents

http://americanfreepress.net/is-is-a-cia-mossad-creation/

Is ‘IS’ a CIA-Mossad Creation?

AUGUST 28, 2014    EXCLUSIVE FROM AFP    31 COMMENTS

By Pete Papaherakles —

The leader of the radical Islamic State (IS), Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, has
been reputed to be a Mossad-trained operative whose real name is Elliot
Shimon, the son of Jewish parents.

This information is said to have originated from 1.7 million pages of
top-secret documents recently released by National Security Agency
whistleblower Edward Snowden and made public by Iranian intelligence.
Arabic Internet radio website “Ajyal.com” and the Arabic news website
“Egy-press” were also early sources before the news went viral. Although
it cannot be conclusively verified at this point, evidence points in
that direction.

IS remains an enigma, as it seems to change names every week. First
proclaimed the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria, it soon became the
Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, then became simply Islamic State
and finally the Islamic Caliphate with the stated goal of conquering
half the world in five years from India to Portugal.

The official story about al-Baghdadi is that he was born near Samara,
Iraq, in 1971. He is reputed to have earned a master’s degree and a
Ph.D. in Islamic studies from the university of Baghdad and was a cleric
at a major mosque in Samara during the U.S. led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

He was given the title of  Emir Daash and went by the false name of
Ibrahim ibn Awad ibn Ibrahim Al Al Badri Arradoui Hoseini.

The leaked documents purportedly revealed that al-Baghdadi took
intensive military training for a year from Mossad as well as courses in
theology and Arabic speech.

Al-Baghdadi was reportedly a “civilian internee” at Camp Bucca, a United
States military detention facility near Umm Qasr, Iraq. Key members of
IS were also trained by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and U.S.
Special Forces command at a secret camp in Jordan in 2012, near the
Syrian and Iraqi border, according to Jordanian officials.

Some evidence suggests that al-Baghdadi may have been mind-controlled
while held prisoner by the U.S. military in Iraq.

Nabil Na’eem, the founder of the Islamic Democratic Jihad Party and
former top al-Qaeda commander has said that all current al-Qaeda
affiliates, including ISIS, work for the CIA.

A recently released photograph shows al-Baghdadi along with half a dozen
others, including Syrian rebel General Salim Idris, attending a secret
meeting with neocon Senator John McCain (R-Ariz.) in Syria in June 2013.
A second photo shows al-Baghdadi posing with McCain and another “rebel.”
McCain was instrumental in supporting terrorist forces fighting the
Syrian government.

The Snowden documents supposedly reveal that British, American and
Israeli intelligence worked together to create IS, “a terrorist
organization capable of centralizing all extremist actions across the
world,” using a strategy called Hornet’s Nest designed to “protect
Israel.” According to the documents, “The only solution for the
protection of the Jewish state is to create an enemy near its borders.”

After gathering the most fanatical terrorists in the world in one place,
a veritable army of real terror was formed and filled with bloodthirsty
murderers, who film their atrocities and post them to the Internet.

On August 19 IS posted a video that apparently shows an IS fighter
beheading the American photojournalist James Wright Foley, in a message
to the U.S. to end its intervention in Iraq.

IS is intended to be a provocative agent, which gives the West the
justification to enter countries that are considered a threat to Israel
in order to destroy them. This would then give Israel the opening it
needs to take over a large swath of the Middle East and establish the
Zionist dream of “Greater Israel” from the Nile to the Euphrates.

(8) Australian IS jihadist is actually an American Jew named Joshua Ryne
Goldberg

http://www.smh.com.au/national/australian-is-jihadist-is-actually-an-jewish-american-troll-20150911-gjk852.html

FBI says 'Australian IS jihadist' is actually a Jewish American troll
named Joshua Ryne Goldberg

by Elise Potaka and Luke McMahon

Sydney Morning Herald

September 11, 2015 - 3:48PM

A young Jewish American man has been charged with pretending to be an
Australian-based Islamic State jihadist after a FBI joint investigation
with the Australian Federal Police based on information provided by
Fairfax Media.

Joshua Ryne Goldberg, a 20-year old living at his parents' house in US
state of Florida, is accused of posing online as "Australi Witness," an
IS supporter who publicly called for a series of attacks against
individuals and events in western countries.

In recent days Australi Witness has claimed online that he is working
with other jihadists to plan attacks in Australia and the United States.
He distributed pictures of a bomb that he was working on with "2 lbs of
explosives inside". Internet troll Joshua Goldberg.

Internet troll Joshua Goldberg. Photo: Facebook A device which appears
to resemble a 'pressure cooker bomb', similar to the type of explosive
used in the Boston Marathon Bombings.

The device appears to resemble a "pressure cooker bomb", similar to the
type of explosive used in the Boston Marathon attack. Advertisement

Early on Friday, Australian time, Goldberg, who is non-Muslim and has no
real-world links with extremism, was arrested at his home by Florida
police for "distribution of information relating to explosives,
destructive devices, and weapons of mass destruction".

Australian national security and citizenship laws were strengthened last
year to create a new offence of advocating terrorism, partly to stop
online recruitment of jihadists, and Prime Minister Tony Abbott earlier
this year allocated significant funding to security agencies because
"too many Australians are being brainwashed online by this death cult".

However, one of those apparent representatives of Islamic State has now
been revealed as an America-based, non-Muslim online hoaxer.

The Australian Federal Police do not intend to apply for Goldberg's
extradition, but said in a statement that he faced a 20-year prison term
if convicted.

"Investigations by the AFP in June 2015 established no initial threat to
the Australian community. When investigations determined it was likely
the person responsible for these threats was based in the United States,
the investigation became the jurisdiction of the FBI, with the AFP in a
support role."

AFP Acting Deputy Commissioner National Security Neil Gaughan alleged
Goldberg had "relied on the internet providing a cloak of anonymity".

"This operation again highlights how law enforcement can investigate
people in the online space and use our long-established partnerships to
work with overseas agencies to bring people to account for their actions".

An affidavit sworn at the time of the arrest says that, between August
19 and August 28, Mr Goldberg "distributed information pertaining to the
manufacturing of explosives, destructive devices, or weapons of mass
destruction in furtherance of an activity that constitutes a Federal
crime of violence".

US Attorney Lee Bentley III, said Goldberg instructed a confidential
source how to make a bomb similar to two used in the Boston Marathon
bombings two years ago that killed three people and injured more than
260 others.

He allegedly instructed someone how to fill the bomb with nails, metal
and other items dipped in rat poison.

Police base the charge on his communication of five web links to sites
that provided instructions that could be used to make explosives as part
of a plot to explode a bomb on September 13 at a memorial ceremony in
Kansas City, commemorating the 9/11 the terrorist attacks.

The affidavit, released by Special agent William Berry of US Customs and
Border Protection, says that Goldberg had initially denied to officers
that he had any involvement with distributing information on how to make
a bomb, but then later admitted it.

"Goldberg further admitted that he believed the information would create
a genuine bomb," Agent Berry alleged.

However, Goldberg also claimed that he meant for the person he was
communicating with to either kill himself creating the bomb or, that
Goldberg intended to warn police in time so that he would receive
"credit for stopping the attack".

In conversations with Fairfax Media, which were also cited in the
affidavit, Mr Goldberg had said he did not expect any jihadist to
actually carry out an attack because: "These guys are pussy keyboard
warriors".

Fairfax media can also reveal that Goldberg, as Australi Witness, is
suspected of a number of other online hoaxes, including posing online as
prominent Australian lawyer, Josh Bornstein.

Australi Witness's online actions might have had fatal real-world
consequences in May.

In the leadup to an exhibition in Garland, Texas, at which pictures of
the Prophet Mohammed were to be displayed, "Australi Witness" tweeted
the event's address and reposted a tweet urging people to go there with
"weapons, bombs or with knifes".

Two Muslim men attempted an attack at the exhibition, and were killed by
police. Australi Witness then praised them online as martyrs.

Australi Witness also urged followers to target Australian cartoonist
Larry Pickering, who has previously depicted the Prophet Mohammed.

The Australi Witness persona fooled members of the international
intelligence community as well as journalists, with well-known analyst
Rita Katz of SITE Intelligence Group saying the "IS supporter" held a
"prestige" position in online jihadi circles and was "part of the hard
core of a group of individuals who constantly look for targets for other
people to attack".

Ms Katz has previously acted as a consultant for US and foreign
governments and testified before Congress on online terrorist activities.

The Australian Federal Police were unaware of Australi Witness's real
identity as Goldberg until contacted by journalists working on behalf of
Fairfax Media.

In the Bornstein hoax, Goldberg established a blog on the Times of
Israel in the lawyer's name before posting an inflammatory article
calling for the "extermination" of Palestinians. The Times retracted the
article and apologised, and Bornstein went public with the story saying
"I deplore racism…I've fought racism since I was four years old".

When confronted, Goldberg boasted he had avoided detection, saying,
"That guy has no idea. He thinks [online radical right wing website]
Daily Stormer did it." He also said he wanted to obtain Bornstein's real
life address, in order to "freak him out even more".

In conversations and in articles written under his real name, Goldberg
repeatedly professed to be an advocate for free speech, and showed
disdain for organisations and individuals who call for limits on hate
speech or hate speech laws.

As Australi Witness, he publicly linked himself to Amnesty
International, saying that he used to work there. The fake jihadi also
claimed a friendship with anti-Islamophobia campaigner Mariam Veiszadeh,
but only to smear her reputation.

In online conversations, Goldberg said: "I wanna smear Amnesty and
Mariam Veiszadeh…Amnesty is already in hot water over their links to
CAGE, I wanna cement their jihadist connections and ruin their
reputation. And Mariam is a Muslim whore, so smearing her as a jihadist
should be easy."

Ms Veiszadeh said she was not suprised at Goldberg's arrest, saying she
had "fallen within his radar" because of the campaign by an anti-Muslim
hate group, the Australian Defence League, who campaigned to "incite
hatred and violence towards me from across the globe."

Mr Bornstein declined to comment.

(9) "When Islam conquers Australia, every single Jew will be slaughtered
like the filthy cockroaches that they are" - Australi Witness (actually
a Jew named Joshua Ryne Goldberg)
http://justpaste.it/auswitness

Created: 09/06/2015

Hello, this is Australi Witness. You might know me for inspiring the
attacks in Garland, Texas, where two mujahideen entered an event mocking
the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) with intent to slaughter the kuffar in it.
When I encouraged the attacks in Texas, my biggest inspiration was the
Australian Muslim human rights activist Mariam Veiszadeh, who has worked
tirelessly and diligently to outlaw blasphemy against Islam in
Australia. Any true Muslim knows that blasphemy against the Prophets of
Allah (SWT) is a capital crime which cannot be tolerated under any
circumstances, and Mariam Veiszadeh's work has provided me with a great
deal of inspiration. All who defame the Prophet (PBUH) must be crushed.
Bill Leak and Larry Pickering will soon meet their demise, as will Josh
Bornstein.

Recently, I have met two mujahideen online - one in Los Angeles and one
in Melbourne - and I have successfully encouraged them to carry out
jihad in their respective cities. Both of these mujahideen will, using
guns, shoot up local synagogues when the maximum amount of Jews are
praying. The entire thing was my idea, and I helped them every step of
the way. I gave them the idea in the first place, I pointed them to
local synagogues, I provided them with copious amounts of encouragement,
and I helped them coordinate the attacks. All of this was done over the
Internet.

For those wondering about me: I currently live in Perth. I came to
Australia as a refugee from Lebanon, and my parents are coconuts who
have no idea of my involvement with jihad.

For many years, I worked at Amnesty International Australia. In my last
year working at Amnesty, I met some Muslim brothers who introduced me to
the Islamic State. I was immediately enamoured with the Islamic State's
ideology, and I quickly became a mujahid. After becoming a mujahid, I
have dedicated my life to striking fear into the hearts of the kuffar
and coordinating acts of jihad around the world.

I cannot disclose where I currently work, but it is a respected human
rights organisation much like Amnesty. I present myself as a moderate in
real life, and the police have absolutely no idea who I am. I am widely
upheld as a pillar of my community, and nobody would EVER suspect me for
anything. You have no chance of finding me.

To the Australian government: you will pay for your new anti-Muslim laws
stripping Islamic State mujahideen of their Australian citizenship.
These laws are a grievous attack on the basic human rights of Muslims.
Expect many more acts of jihad to occur on Australian shores for as long
as you continue to strip Muslim Australians of their fundamental human
rights.

To the Jews: you killed the Rasul (SAW) and he died a Shaheed. Any
Muslim who truly loves the Prophet (PBUH) will engage in jihad against
Jews in order to avenge his death. The Jews are the worst enemies of
Allah (SWT). When Islam conquers Australia, every single Jew will be
slaughtered like the filthy cockroaches that they are.

Finally, I would like to state with absolute authority that Islam is
most definitely NOT a religion of peace. Islam is a religion of violent
conquest. And, rest assured, Australia: Islam WILL conquer your nation.
As a matter of fact, it is already happening. Your churches are becoming
mosques, your food is becoming halal, your women are having our babies,
and your laws are becoming sharia. Australia's defeat at the hands of
Islam is inevitable. The more you try to fight it, the harder it will be
for you. Give up and accept your future as an Islamic nation - a member
of the global Islamic caliphate that the Islamic State will create,
Allah (SWT) willing.

I have a vast network of mujahideen around the world, and I will
continue to inspire and coordinate jihad attacks around the world. There
is absolutely nothing that you can do to stop me. I am an expert in
computer security who uses multiple proxies, and I am also an expert in
Australian law due to my extensive work with human rights organisations.
Chase me all you want, but you will never find me, and you will also
never stop the wrath of Allah (SWT) on the decadent West.

Perish in your rage, kuffar!

(10) ISIS was created in US prisons in Iraq

http://rt.com/news/250949-isis-strategy-blueprints-syria/

ISIS Secret Service: Slain top strategist’s blueprints reveal covert
Syria takeover op

Published time: April 19, 2015 02:57

While ISIS appears to be run by religious fanaticism, it instead has
been functioning more like a secret intelligence service, calculating
every operation and drafting plans of a covert Syrian takeover for
years, files seen by Der Spiegel have revealed.

The German magazine is citing secret papers of the strategic head of
ISIS, who was killed in a firefight in 2014, but who left behind
information regarding a trove of blueprints for ISIS intelligence
services’ structure and plans of a takeover of large parts of Syrian
territory.

Page-by-page the documents reveal a sophisticated plan, not so much for
jihad, but for building a caliphate run by cold calculations.

The organizational charts and chains of command drawn by the top
strategist reveal a clearly-defined Secret Service structure with
surveillance and security departments, prison and interrogation
divisions, weapons and technology experts, as well as sharia judges and
instructors.

The records, Spiegel reports, contain details of ISIS espionage
operations and other intelligence activities to covertly gain power in
territories of their interest and make sure no dissent would be possible
after an actual armed takeover.

The documents explain how men would initially be recruited by ISIS in
target towns and villages via local cells disguised as Islamic
missionary centers. The recruits then would report back to ISIS
leadership with information on the powerful locals as well as what their
sources of income were, people’s political orientation and any other
information which could be used to blackmail them later.

“We will appoint the smartest ones as Sharia sheiks... We will train
them for a while and then dispatch them,” the ISIS mastermind Haji Bakr,
whose real name was Samir Abd Muhammad al-Khlifawi, had noted in one of
the papers. “Brothers” would be selected in each town to marry the
daughters of the most influential families, in order to "ensure
penetration of these families without their knowledge.”

The Islamic State leadership gathered any information useful for
dividing and subjugating the local population. As far as Syria was
concerned, they used whoever they could and changed allegiances whenever
they felt like it, with their informants including former intelligence
spies as well as opponents of the regime.

Another phase of the plan included the elimination of any powerful
people and potential leaders who could organize the local population
against the infiltrators. But in towns where the resistance grown too
strong, the publication writes, ISIS temporarily withdrew allowing local
Syrian rebels confront the government forces.

The reason why ISIS are so successful as a terrorist organization is
partly because many of their founding members, including the top
strategist, were part of Saddam Hussein’s professional security
apparatus. By shattering the well-trained army of Saddam, the US
apparently created an group of very intelligent enemies.

Bakr was a “highly intelligent, firm and an excellent logistician,” as
an Iraqi journalist described the former officer. But when the US
suddenly dissolved the Iraqi army after the 2003 invasion he became
“bitter and unemployed.”

Being a “nationalist” rather than an Islamist, Bakr together with other
former Iraqi intelligence officers gave the organization a “religious
face” in 2010, the publication claims. The group appointed an educated
cleric Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as their leader and future caliph.

The terrorist organization apparently realized most of their plans, and
by late 2012 things in Syria were a mess with Pesident Assad’s pushed
back while hundreds of local councils and rebel brigades took control of
the territory. This anarchic mix was exploited by this tightly-organized
group of ex-officers to create the terrorist caliphate that straddles
much of Syria and Iraq today.

(11) Prisoners wrote each other’s telephone numbers on the inside of
their boxer shorts

http://rt.com/news/213843-isis-creation-prison-iraq/

ISIS leader says US prisons in Iraq led to creation of terrorist
organization

Published time: December 12, 2014 13:59

A leading member of the Islamic State has revealed the group could never
have been formed without the help of the US. American prison camps in
Iraq gave the Islamists the perfect opportunity to meet and plan their
eventual rise to power.

Ten years ago, Abu Ahmed was incarcerated at Camp Bucca, a US run prison
in Iraq. In an exclusive interview a decade later to the Guardian, he
reveals how the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) might never have
formed if US detention centers hadn’t existed.

Abu Ahmed, who uses a pseudonym, is now one of the Islamic State’s
senior leaders. He recalls how he initially feared going to Camp Bucca,
but he soon realized he had arrived at a facility that was a hive of
Islamist radicals.

“We could never have all got together like this in Baghdad, or anywhere
else,” he told the Guardian. “It would have been impossibly dangerous.
Here, we were not only safe, but we were only a few hundred meters away
from the entire Al-Qaida leadership.”

The Iraqi government estimates that 17 of the most important IS leaders
spent time in US prison’s from 2004-11, the Guardian reported. The
inmates were released at different times and were spread across the
country. However, they came-up with an ingenious way to stay in touch
after being granted their freedom. They would write each other’s
telephone numbers and addresses on the inside of their boxer shorts, as
they had no access to paper or other electronic aids.

After Abu Ahmed was released, the first thing he did when he was safe in
Baghdad was to undress, then carefully take a pair of scissors to his
underwear and cut away the elastic where everything was written down. “I
cut the fabric from my boxers and all the numbers were there. We
reconnected. And we got to work.” Across Iraq, other ex-inmates were
doing the same. “It really was that simple,” Abu Ahmed said, as he
recalled how his captors had been outwitted. “Boxers helped us win the war.”

During his time at Camp Bucca, Abu Ahmed also came face to face with the
current IS leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi. He says Al-Baghdadi proved he
had a direct lineage to the Prophet Mohammed and also had a PhD in
Islamic studies from the University of Baghdad, which played a key role
in being able to maneuver himself into a position of power.

“Baghdadi was a quiet person. He had a charisma. You could feel that he
was someone important. But there were others who were more important. I
honestly did not think he would get this far,” Abu Ahmed told the Guardian.

“The Americans never knew who they had,” Abu Ahmed continued, speaking
of Al-Baghdadi. However, the US army was not alone as most of Baghdadi’s
fellow prisoners – some 24,000 men, divided into 24 camps – seem to have
been equally unaware.

However, the current IS leader certainly managed to create a rapport
with the US Army. He was often seen as a go-between to settle disputes
between rival factions in the prison camp.

“But as time went on, every time there was a problem in the camp, he was
at the center of it. He wanted to be the head of the prison – and when I
look back now, he was using a policy of conquer and divide to get what
he wanted, which was status. And it worked.”

By December 2004, Baghdadi was deemed by his jailers to pose no further
risk and his release was authorized. He eventually left Camp Bucca in 2009.

“He was respected very much by the US army,” Abu Ahmed said. “If he
wanted to visit people in another camp he could, but we couldn’t. And
all the while, a new strategy, which he was leading, was rising under
their noses, and that was to build the Islamic State. If there was no
American prison in Iraq, there would be no IS now. Bucca was a factory.
It made us all. It built our ideology.”

Camp Bucca was one of a number of US prisons in Iraq, but the most
infamous was Abu Ghraib, which closed in April.

It came to international attention in early 2004, when it was revealed
that US troops physically and sexually abused, tortured, raped, and
killed inmates. The disturbing images that came out of the facility went
a long way to fueling Iraqi fury with American forces, and forever
changed the perception of the war.

Hundreds of prisoners escaped from Abu Ghraib last year when nearby
Fallujah fell under the control of the Islamic State. An attack on Abu
Ghraib and Taji prisons freed more than 500 prisoners, including a
number of senior militants and killed 120 Iraqi guards and SWAT forces,
an Al-Qaeda spokesman told reporters last year.