Considering the preliminary issues mentioned regarding the history of the contemporary Salafist movement, it can be said that the starting point of the world’s acquaintance with the Salafi stream in recent decades lies with the formation of a group of Afghan mujahidin against the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. on December 24, 1979, the former Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan and occupied a large part of the country. Invading Afghanistan was an attempt to expand the sphere of influence of communism. Hence, in response to such measures, the United States began to use the armed groups with jihadi views as instruments in its strategic policies. Since the declaration of war on the former Soviet Union, the United States has used these groups to withdraw its troops from Afghanistan.
During the jihad period, the United States financially supported mujahidin groups in Pakistan and sought to beat the communist regimes of Kabul and the Soviet Union. In order to secure its strategic interests in the Afghan war, the United States extended a hand of friendship to the most extreme Takfiri elements organizing and providing them with money and weapons. Thus, the United States opened the way to the emergence and strengthening of al-Qaedah. The name of this organization is derived from the military garrison of this group that was called Qaedah al-Jihad (The Foundation for Sacred Battle) and most of its members used to call it the international front of “Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.” Osama bin Laden, the founder of al-Qaedah, was widely affiliated with and supported by the military, political and economic institutions of the United States, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.
Saudi Arabia maintained its support of al-Qaedah later on though it faced ups and downs in this regard. Baker and Hamilton have pointed out some of these supports in recent years.
The United States aids aimed at helping the mujahidin groups to beat the Soviet Union not properly strengthening them. The United States supported the mujahidin only because of beating the Soviet Union and preventing the expansion of the sphere of its influence on United States allies.
In fact, this was the main goal of the United States and the country did not intend to establish new and stable governance in Afghanistan. In other words, the United States did not support the mujahidin with the aim of helping Afghan people, but rather the country’s goal was to use Afghanistan as a barrier against the influence of communism. With that said, it’s easy to see how in Afghanistan everyone realized that the United States has been supporting the Taliban.
Meanwhile, Saudi Arabia’s interest in shaping and supporting the Takfiri movements should not be ignored. The role of Saudi Arabia in this issue can be viewed through two perspectives: on the one hand, based on the perverted beliefs inspired by Wahhabism, standing up against communism, which is the case with the unbelievers, would bring the rewards of doing jihad in the way of God for the mujahidin who seek to grasp the grace of jihad against the infidels; on the other hand, supporting such Salafi movements by Saudis is regarded as to curry favour with the West and carrying out their duty as the dependent elements in order to secure the interests of the West.
During the Cold War, American politicians, as the main supporter of Al Saud, not only welcomed the Wahhabis who were openly opposing the most basic human rights standards but also used them as a winning weapon in the battle against the democratic and pro-independence movements in Arab countries and across the Muslim World in an attempt to secure their interests in the Middle East. It should be noted that the United States government tried to maintain such a strategy afterwards.
As mentioned, on the one hand, the Salafi stream is based on the intra-religious deviations which believers have tried to keep observing them to the extent of sacrificing their lives, and on the other hand, it is the use of such intellectual movements by the United States for its own benefits. That is why after the end of the jihadi conflicts in Afghanistan, the United States provided another ground within which the jihadis would be able to keep getting the reward of jihad.
According to some news sources, there are about 21 million Salafi radical Islamists in the Caucasus and Chechen regions, in which there is a very high potential for future heretical movements. This situation is an opportunity for the United States such that that it can use those streams in the way of the fulfillment of its future goals.
However, some would argue that all of these events are related to the particular atmosphere of the Cold War era. The international hostile situation during the Cold War had made perusing such a “realistic” policy inevitable; but after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the foundations of the formation of such alliances have disappeared. It goes without saying that in many cases, behind such an argument there is an attempt to justify White House leaders’ policies and disclaim their responsibility. Because, in this way, they were, at best, the saviours who should save the world from Soviet imperialism while preventing the nations from being succumbed to the “empire of the devil” one after another. Of course, Americans did not have the ideal tools and facilities in this field so they had to focus on existing options - including the alliance with the Takfiris and Salafists.
What seems to justify such an argument is that shortly after the end of the war in Afghanistan and the fall of the Soviet Union, bin Laden and his associates turned their weapons back on their former allies in an effort to act against their interests and citizens at different regions.
The attacks on United States forces in Yemen in 1992, and once more in Somalia in 1993, are attributed to bin Laden’s network. They also targeted five United States soldiers in Riyadh in November 1995 and killed nineteen United States soldiers in a suicide bombing in Dhahran in June 1998. In February 1998, bin Laden declared a fatwa that was identified as the “World Islamic Front for Jihad Against Jews and Crusaders.”
In the first paragraph of the declaration, it was stated that it is legitimate and even obligatory to kill the “Americans and their allies, whether military or civilian” in the name of Islam. Subsequently, al-Qaedah’s anti-American operations were intensified: the attack on United States embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in August 1998, the attack against USS Cole, a guided-missile destroyer of the United States Navy, on 12 October 2000 in Yemen’s Aden harbour, and finally, the September 11 attacks in New York which led to the United States military engagement in Afghanistan and its military confrontation with al-Qaedah network and Taliban regime.
In response to this argument, it should be noted that the close ties between American statesmen and the Wahhabis and Takfiris are unquestionably have not set on the basis of common doctrines and ideals. In other words, what is called the American values is not similar to the fundamental beliefs of Islamic fundamentalists, and the American lifestyle is contrary to the ideals of fundamentalism for which they fight. However, this obvious fact would not make the realistic United States’ foreign policy strategists such as Kissinger and Brzezinski ignore these forces in the way of providing United States imperialist interests and objectives. Basically, Americans adopt an instrumental approach towards the fundamentalists and using them is based on the basic principle of American dominance and superiority. As Caspar Weinberger who was Secretary of Defence under President Ronald Reagan has said: “We knew that they were not very good people, but we had to choose them... Remember what Churchill has said: even if Hitler had invaded hell, the House of Commons had no choice but to deal with the devil.”
The only problem was that “the devil” that the Americans were trading with, naturally was not so predictable. He was not a loyal creature because he acted against his former partners and jeopardized their security. Therefore, the question is that with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War do the Takfiris no longer benefit the United States? Do American authorities now deal with Salafi terrorists as the elements that would bring nothing but loss and problems for the United States and its allies? With al-Qaedah’s terrorist operations against United States citizens and institutions between 1991 and 2001, which ultimately led to the United States invasion of Afghanistan, it seemed that the answer to the above questions was positive. But with the rise of the bloody civil war in Syria (since 2011), it has become clear that that is not true.
The rise of the Arab nations against the autocracy and the corruption of their rulers (what was known as the Arab Spring or the Islamic Awakening) could have been a new phase in the history of the Arabs, leading to the establishment of democracy and social justice in Arab countries; yet, a combination of factors caused the failure of such movements and the dream of the Arab people in this regard did not become true at the time. The in-depth analysis of the factors of this failure is not the subject of this article, but as far as the present discussion is concerned, the United States and its partners in the region including Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey and Israel have played a role in diverting the movements of the region from the right path and driving them towards being involved in a bloody cycle of anarchy and authoritarianism.
Liberation revolts in Egypt, Tunisia, Yemen, Lebanon, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia had anti-American orientations which had been the natural result of decades of White House support of the tyrannical rulers. In addition, the revolutionaries were furious at the passive attitude of the Arab rulers with respect to the siege, repression and killing of the Palestinians by the Israeli regime, and therefore they often had anti-Zionist tendencies. The spontaneous public uprisings within the Arab countries were inclined towards independence and liberation from the domination of the West and were organized to oppose the governments that guarantee the United States’ hegemony in the region. Accordingly, the United States and its allies had to engage in order to stop and manage the protests.
On March 15, 2011, with the arrival of Secretary of Defence Robert Gates to Bahrain, Saudi military forces were deployed to Bahrain and began to oppress the Bahraini revolutionaries because of the green light given by the United States. In addition, the United States engaged in the Libyan conflict. While Hillary Clinton (the United States Secretary of State) had announced that the United States is planning to carry out military actions in Libya, the United States’ ground and naval forces laid siege to Libya. Eventually, the NATO military aircraft began to fly over Libyan airspace with the consent of the Security Council. “This operation is carried out with the aim of setting up a no-fly zone in order to protect Libyan people against the al-Qadhafi regime” stated the secretary-general of NATO.
But what actually happened was a direct attack on military and political centers and facilities, and even on Gadhafi’s bunkers. In fact, what led to the overthrow of al-Qadhafi was not the Libyan people’s revolution but the NATO invasion. With the intervention of NATO in Libya, a new chapter in Takfiri jihadist ties with the United States was opened. Jeffrey Scott Shapiro, in a 16-page article published in Washington Post, explains how the United States had been aware of the involvement of al-Qaedah elements in the Libyan conflict and how this country observed and managed the process of those forces being armed with weapons which had been sent by western and Arab countries to Benghazi.
Archive of The Enemies of the Islamic Revolution
leave your comments