An article marking the anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, which was posted on the Saudi government's Al-Sakinah website that conducts online dialogue with extremists with the aim of persuading them to renounce their jihadi views,[1] claims that the U.S. employs terrorist organizations as a tool in pursuit of its own agenda. The article states that these terrorist organizations are used by the U.S. to destabilize the countries of the world, and that when these countries ask the U.S. for its help to combat them, it imposes its hegemony over them. Terrorism, it argues, will never disappear from the world as long as it serves U.S. interests.
The following are excerpts from the article:[2]
The U.S. Is Not Serious About Combating Terrorism
"The 12th anniversary of the 9/11 terror attacks – which struck the U.S., shook it, and partly exposed the fragility of its military and intelligence apparatuses – raises a plethora of questions regarding the [future] fate of terrorism, now that the war against it has been globalized and an international coalition has been formed to combat it.
"Prior to 9/11, the scope of terrorism was very limited. The number of operations was small and so was the number of victims and losses. However, after 9/11, the war on terror caused [this phenomenon] to take on dangerous global proportions, cutting across geographical, political and religious boundaries. The U.S. played a central role in transforming terror into a global [phenomenon] and widening its scope of operation – thanks to its new strategy, which is based on the principle of 'creative chaos.'
"This strategy allows [the U.S.] to redraw the map of the Arab countries, as part of what is known as the Greater Middle East [plan], and to sow religious and sectarian war that enables it to control the future of the peoples and their states.
"The U.S. used two tools, different in orientation but similar in their goals, that serve the American strategy. [This is not one of those] conspiracy theories which the Arabs and Muslims [often] regard as an appropriate way of explaining their failures. The facts prove that the U.S. is not serious about the war on terror and about drying up its sources, so much as it supports terrorist elements that serve its agenda.
"A simple comparison between the war on terror that France is leading in northern Mali and the war that the U.S. is waging in Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, and Somalia is enough to clarify the difference between the two strategies. France successfully eliminated the rule of terror in northern Mali, whose area is equal to that of France and Belgium combined, within three months, and with minimal losses in property and life. Such rapid and efficient elimination of an Islamic emirate in such a wide area of mountainous desert terrain is unprecedented in the history of the war on terror. Moreover, France [even] managed to eliminate the last of the terrorists, destroy their bases, and thwart suicide bombers' [attempts to] carry out their terrorist plans and turn Mali into [their] gateway to Paradise, as the Emirs of Bloodshed promised.[3] It is determination and [strength of] will that enabled France to achieve this shining victory over the terrorists in Mali, not [its] equipment or logistics.
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"The U.S., on the other hand, in order to realize its agendas, devises mechanisms which do not place it in direct confrontation with the terrorist organizations, but which allow it to use them to blackmail and invade [countries] or achieve hegemony [over them]."
Terrorist Organizations Serve The American Strategy
"The U.S. and the terrorists have overlapping interests on a number of levels. The most basic level [involves] undermining the stability of the target states, and the highest [involves] providing the Americans with an opportunity to impose their agenda on existing or emerging regimes in conflict areas that the extremists have raided, as a prelude to an American takeover…
"Terror cannot be expected to vanish as long as the terror organizations continue to serve the American strategy, because [the terror organizations] are the most useful tool [that America possesses] to undermine stability and threaten regimes and states, which are [thereby] compelled to receive American assistance in their war on terror. That is how [American] hegemony [over these states] begins.
"The second tool devised by American intelligence, in disregard of the Arab peoples and regimes, is the so-called 'Arab Spring revolutions,' which a large number of politicians, researchers, and experts believe to be popular revolutions against oppression and for liberty, dignity and democracy…
"Terror and these 'revolutions,' then... are tools that allow the U.S. to realize a strategy for securing its own interests…
"That is why the U.S. supports the terror of the extremists in Syria, but fights them in Afghanistan, strengthens them in Iraq, bribes them in Pakistan, and plots with them in the Sinai, Libya, the Sahel and the Sahara.
"The events of 9/11 effectively marked the beginning of the second stage in the war on terror – [a war] that transforms terror into [an American] tool for redrawing the map of the Greater Middle East and gaining hegemony over the entities within it."
Endnotes:
[1] See MEMRI Inquiry & Analysis No. 260, Reeducation of Extremists in Saudi Arabia, January 18, 2006.
