14- Daesh and the Caliphate
Daesh became known for torture and public slaughter.
Initially, the members of the Al-Nosra Front (Al Qaeda in Syria) were Syrians who left to fight in Iraq after the fall of Baghdad in 2003. They returned to Syria to participate in the planned operation against the Republic, which was ultimately postponed until July 2012. For two years – until 2005 – they received assistance from Syria, which permitted them to move freely, under the assumption that they were fighting the U.S. invader. However, it became clear when General David Petraeus arrived in Iraq that their real function was to fight the Shia Iraqis for the pleasure of the occupiers. In April 2013, the Islamic Emirate in Iraq, from which they originated, was reactivated as the Islamic Emirate in Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). The members of the Al-Nusra Front, who have carved out a large share in Syria, then refused to return to their homeland.
John McCain in occupied Syria. In the foreground on the right is the Director of the Syrian Emergency Task Force. In the doorway, in the centre, the spokesperson for Northern Storm (Al Qaeda), Mohammad Nour. The families of the Lebanese hostages would file a complaint against the “senator” for complicity in the kidnapping. He would ensure that he did not know Nour. He appeared in this official photo circulated by his parliamentary secretariat.
In May 2013, a US Zionist association, the Syrian Emergency Task Force, organized Senator McCain’s trip to occupied Syria. He met various criminals, including Mohammad Nour, spokesman for the Katiba (Brigade) Northern Storm (Al Qaeda), who had kidnapped and detained 11 Lebanese Shia pilgrims in Azaz. A photograph released by his press service showed him in a major discussion with leaders of the free Syrian army, some of whom also carried the Al-Nusra Front flag. Doubts arose as to the identity of one of them. I later wrote that it was the future Caliph of Daesh, which the Senator’s secretariat formally denied[1]. Since the same man had served as a translator for journalists, doubt is permissible. The secretariat would argue that my hypothesis is absurd, since Daesh has threatened the senator several times with death threats. Shortly afterwards, John McCain stated on television, without fear of contradiction, that he personally knew the Daesh executives and was in “permanent contact with them”. While the senator had no illusions about the Islamists, he claimed to have learned from Vietnam and supported them against the “Bashar regime” out of strategic necessity. He had therefore, before the start of the events in Syria, organized their arms supplies from Lebanon and chose the village of Ersal as the future rear base of operations. During his visit to jihadist Syria, he assessed the conditions for Daesh’s future functioning.
John McCain and the staff of the Syrian Free Army. In the foreground on the left is the man who will later play the role of Daesh’s “Caliph Ibrahim”, with whom the senator is in discussion. Just after, Brigadier General Salim Idriss (with glasses). The “Caliph” is an actor that has never exercised any responsibility. According to John McCain, it is not the Caliph, but a similar person. However, the senator later admitted that he was in “permanent contact” with Daesh.
In December 2013, Turkish police and the Turkish judiciary established that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan had been secretly receiving Yasin Al-Qadi, Al-Qaeda’s banker, for several years. Photographs show that he travelled several times by private plane and was greeted after the airport’s surveillance cameras were cut off. Al-Qadi was once (and probably still is) a personal friend of former US Vice President Dick Cheney. He was only removed from the list of persons wanted by the UN on 5 October 2012 as well as by the US Treasury Department on 26 November 2014, but had been coming to meet Erdogan for much longer. He acknowledged that he was responsible for funding the Arab Legion of Bin Laden in Bosnia and Herzegovina (1991-95) and that he funded President Alija Izetbegovic. According to the FBI, he also played a central role in financing the attacks on the United States embassies in Tanzania and Kenya (1998). According to the FBI, he was the owner of the computer company Ptech (now Go Agile), which is suspected of being a player in international terrorism.
Surveillance cameras at Istanbul Airport surprised Bilal Erdogan as he received Al Qaeda’s treasurer, Yasin el-Kadi.
Shortly afterwards, Turkish police raided the IHH headquarters and arrested Halis B., suspected of being Al Qaeda’s leader in Turkey, and Ibrahim S., the organization’s second in command for the Middle East. Erdogan managed to remove the police officers and released the suspects.
On the Saudi public channel Al-Arabiya, an officer from Daesh said that the organization is headed by Prince Abdul Rahman Al-Faiçal.
In January 2014, the United States began a major program to develop an undisclosed jihadist organization. Three training camps were set up in Turkey in Sanliurfa, Osmaniye and Karaman[2]. Weapons arrived in massive numbers at the ISIL, prompting Al-Nusra’s greed. For several months, the two groups waged a merciless war against each other. France and Turkey, not immediately understanding what was being prepared, sent ammunition to Al-Nusra (Al Qaeda) to seize the ISIL’s assets from the outset. Saudi Arabia claimed its leadership role with regard to the ISIL and announced that Prince Abdul Rahman Al-Faiçal (brother of the Saudi Ambassador to the United States and the Saudi Minister of Foreign Affairs) had taken over the leadership of the ISIL.
The situation was gradually becoming clearer: the White House summoned the heads of the secret services of Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Qatar and Turkey on 18 February. National Security Advisor Susan Rice told them that Prince Bandar was unable to regain his health and that he would be replaced by Prince Mohammed Ben Nayef to supervise the jihadists. But Nayef had no natural authority over these people, which whetted the Turks’ appetites. She informed them of the new organizational chart of the free Syrian army and that Washington would entrust them with a vast secret operation to reshape the borders. In early May, Abdelhakim Belhaj (a former Al Qaeda official, military governor of Tripoli in Libya and founder of the Free Syrian Army) travelled to Paris to inform the French government of US/Jihadist plans and end France’s war with the ISIL. He was received at the Quai d’Orsay. From May 27 to June 1, several jihadist leaders were invited for consultations in Amman, Jordan.
According to the minutes of this meeting, Sunni fighters would be grouped under the banner of the ISIL. They would be provided with a large supply of Ukrainian weapons and transport. They would seize control of a vast area straddling Syria and Iraq, primarily the desert, and proclaim an independent state there. Their mission was both to cut the Beirut/Damascus/Baghdad/Tehran road and to destroy the Franco-British borders of Syria and Iraq. Former Iraqi Vice-President Ezzat Ibrahim Al-Douri, who was the Master of the Order of the Nashqbandis in his country, announced that he would contribute 80,000 former soldiers of Saddam’s army. The CIA confirmed that 120,000 fighters from the Sunni tribes of Al-Anbar would join the ISIL upon its arrival and provide it with heavy weapons that the Pentagon would deliver to the area, officially for the Iraqi army. Mauro “Jomaa” Barzani, head of the secret services of the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq, obtained the power to annex the disputed Kirkuk territories when the ISIL annexed Al-Anbar. The significance of the presence of Mullah Krekar, who was serving a prison sentence in Norway and who had arrived on a special NATO plane, was not understood. In fact, for several years he played an important role in the Islamists’ ideological preparation for the proclamation of the Caliphate. But this issue would not be discussed during the meeting.
At the same time, at the West Point Military Academy, President Barack Obama announced the resumption of the “war on terrorism” and the allocation of an annual budget of $5 billion. The White House would later state that this program included the training of 5,400 “moderate rebels” per year.
In June, the Islamic Emirate launched an attack first in Iraq, then in Syria and proclaimed a caliphate. until then, Daesh – as they were now known by their Arabic acronym – was supposed to have only a few hundred fighters, but then miraculously they suddenly had several hundred thousand men at their disposal. Iraq’s doors were opened to them by Saddam Hussein’s former officers, who took revenge on the Baghdad government, and by Shia officers who then emigrated to the United States. Daesh seized the weapons of the Iraqi army that the Pentagon had just delivered, and the reserves of the Central Bank of Mosul. Simultaneously and in a coordinated manner, the Kurdistan Regional Government annexed Kirkuk and announced the holding of a referendum on self-determination. In order to prevent jihadists from groups competing with the Islamic Emirate from flowing back into Turkey, Ankara closed its border with Syria.
As soon as it was installed, Daesh appointed civilian administrators trained in Fort Bragg (USA), some of whom had recently been part of the US administration in Iraq. Instantly, Daesh had the administration of a State within the framework of the US Army’s State building. It was obviously a complete transformation of what was only a few weeks earlier a small terrorist group.
Almost everything had been planned in advance. Thus, when Daesh took over Iraq’s military airports, they were immediately provided with combat-capable aircraft and helicopter pilots. They are not ex-Army pilots, as their competence was deemed impaired after 6 months of flight interruption. But the planners had not provided the necessary technical teams, so some of this equipment could not be used.
Daesh had a communication service, which appeared to be mainly composed of MI6 specialists, both in charge of publishing its newspapers and staging Allah’s violence. This was another change for jihadists. Until now, they had used violence to terrorize populations. From then on, they would magnify it to shock and hypnotize them. Remarkably filmed and aesthetically pleasing, their videos would captivate minds and recruit snuff film lovers.
John McCain and Abdelhakim Belhaj. As this picture is taken, Interpol is looking for Belhaj as the Emir of Daesh in the Maghreb.
Daesh’s resounding success led Islamists all over the world to turn to him. If Al-Qaeda was their reference in the time of Osama bin Laden and his doubles, the Caliph “Ibrahim” is their new idol. One by one, the majority of jihadist groups around the world pledged allegiance to Daesh. On 23 February 2015, Egypt’s Attorney General, Hichem Baraket, sent a note to Interpol stating that Abdelhakim Belhaj, military governor of Tripoli, was the Daesh commander for the entire Maghreb region.
Daesh exploited Iraqi and Syrian oil[3]. The crude oil was transported either by the pipeline controlled by the Kurdish Regional Government of Iraq or by tankers of the companies Serii and Sam Otomotiv via the border crossings of Karkamıs, Akçakale, Cilvegözü and Öncüpınar Part of the crude oil was refined for Turkish consumption by Turkish Petroleum Refineries Co (Tüpras) in Batman. It was taken on board in Ceyhan, Mersin and Dortyol on the ships of Palmali Shipping & Agency JSC, the company of Turkish-Azeri billionaire Mubariz Gurbanoglu. Most of the crude oil was carried to Israel, where it received false certificates of origin, and then to Europe (including France, where it was refined in Fos-sur-Mer). The rest was sent directly to Ukraine. This system was well known to professionals and was discussed at the World Congress of Oil Companies (15-19 June in Moscow). Speakers reported that Aramco (USA/Saudi Arabia) organized the distribution of Daesh oil in Europe, while Exxon-Mobil (the Rockefeller company that ruled Qatar) sold Al-Nusra’s[4]. A few months later, the representative of the European Union in Iraq, Ambassador Jana Hybaskova, would confirm, at a hearing before the European Parliament, that EU Member States were subsidizing Daesh through the purchase of its oil.
At first, the UN Security Council failed to denounce this trafficking, at most its president reminded them of the ban on trading with terrorist organizations. It was not until February 2015 that Resolution 2199 was passed. Mubariz Gurbanoglu then withdrew and sold several of his ships (Mecid Aslanov, Begim Aslanova, Poet Qabil, Armada Breeze and Shovket Alekperova) to BMZ Group Denizcilik ve Insaat A.S., the shipping company of Bilal Erdogan, son of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which continued in the business. It was only in November 2015, at the G20 summit in Antalya, that Vladimir Putin accused Turkey of violating the UN resolution and marketing Daesh oil. In response to President Erdogan’s denials, the Russian army’s head of operations, General Sergei Rudskoy, released satellite images of the 8,500 tankers crossing the Turkish border at a press conference. Immediately Russian aircraft destroyed the trucks in Syria, but most of the traffic continued via Iraqi Kurdistan under the supervision of President Massoud Barzani. Work was then undertaken to expand the “Yumurtalik” oil terminal (connected to the Kirkuk-Ceyhan Turkish-Iraqi oil pipeline), whose storage capacity had increased to 1.7 million tonnes.
The tankers all belonged to a company that had obtained, without a call for tenders, the monopoly of transporting oil on Turkish territory, Powertans. It was owned by the mysterious Grand Fortune Ventures, based in Singapore, and then transferred to the Cayman Islands. Behind this montage was Çalik Holding, Berat Albayrak’s company, President Erdogan’s son-in-law and his Minister of Energy[5].
The oil that travelled through the Kurdish pipeline was sold identically. However, when the Iraqi government denounced both the Barzani’s complicity with Daesh and the theft of Iraqi public property they were committing together, Ankara feigned surprised. Erdogan then blocked the Iraqi Kurds’ income in a Turkish bank account, waiting for Erbil and Baghdad to clarify their positions. Of course, as this money was supposedly blocked, the income generated by its investments was not declared in the Turkish Budget, but was paid to the AKP.
In September 2014, the Caliph purged the executives of the organization. Maghrebian officers in general and Tunisian officers in particular were accused of disobedience, sentenced to death and executed. They were replaced by Chechens from Georgia and Chinese Uighurs. The Georgian Military Intelligence Officer, Tarkhan Batirashvili, became the Caliph’s right-hand man under the name of “Abu Omar Al-Shishani”. The Georgian Minister of Defence and former head of the “Abkhaz government in exile” (sic), Irakli Alassania, announces that he was preparing to host training camps for Syrian jihadists in his country.
In response to large-scale atrocities and the execution of two American journalists, President Obama announced on September 13 the creation of an Anti-Daesh Coalition. During the Battle of Kobane (Syria), the US Air Force aircraft made the experience last by bombarding Daesh on some days and dropping weapons and ammunition on others.
According to the American press, the Frenchman David Drugeon, an officer of the French military secret service, was Daesh’s bomber who trained Mohammed Merah and the Kouachi brothers. The French Ministry of Defence denies having used it, while the US press maintains its assertion. He is opportunely missing since an Allied bombing.
The Coalition claimed to be conducting an operation against a certain Khorasan group of al-Qaeda in Syria. Although there was no evidence of the existence of this group, the US press reported that it was led on a mission by a French secret service bomber, David Drugeon, which was denied by the French Ministry of Defense. Subsequently, the American press reported that Drugeon trained Mohammed Merah (responsible for the Toulouse and Montauban attacks in 2012) and the Kouachi brothers (responsible for the attack on Charlie Hebdo in Paris in 2015) on behalf of the French secret services.
To expand its resources, Daesh introduced taxes in the territories it administered, ransomed prisoners, and trafficked antiquities. The latter activity was supervised by Abu Sayyaf Al-Iraqi. Stolen goods were shipped to Gaziantep (Turkey). They were either sent directly to the collectors who ordered them from Senocak Nakliyat, Devran Nakliyat, Karahan Nakliyat and Egemen Nakliyat, or sold at the market at Bakırcılar Çarsısı[6].
In addition, the Turkish mafia, led by Prime Minister Binali Yildirim, established counterfeit factories on the territory of the Islamic Emirate and with them flooded the Western world.
Finally, when Afghan President Hamid Karzai left power, he withdrew the transport of Afghan opium and heroin from the Kosovars and took charge of the Caliphate. For many years, the Afghan President’s family – including his brother Ahmed Wali Karzai until his murder – had ruled over the main opium cartel. Under the protection of the US armed forces, Afghanistan produced 380 tonnes of heroin per year out of the 430 tonnes on the world market. This trade was estimated to have brought in $3 billion for the Karzai clan in 2013. Daesh was responsible for transporting drugs to Europe via its African and Asian subsidiaries.
15- The Liquidation of Daesh
Just as in Afghanistan, MI6 had renamed the “Islamic United Front for the Salvation of Afghanistan” into the “Northern Alliance” in order to obtain Western public support for these “Taliban resistance fighters”, so MI6 renamed the “Movement for Faith” in Myanmar into the “Arakan Rohingya Liberation Army”. In both cases, any mention of the Muslim Brotherhood must be removed.
On May 21, 2017, President Donald Trump announced in Riyadh that the United States would renounce the creation of a “Sunnistan” (Daesh Caliphate) straddling Iraq and Syria and would cease to support international terrorism. He urged all Muslim states to do the same. This speech was carefully prepared with the Pentagon and Prince Mohamed Ben Salmane, but not with London. While Saudi Arabia obeyed and began to dismantle the gigantic support system for the Muslim Brotherhood it had put in place over the past sixty years, the United Kingdom, Qatar, Turkey and Malaysia refused to accept US developments.
In August 2017, London launched the Arakan Rohingya Salvation Army against the Burmese government. For a month, international public opinion is replete with truncated information attributing the exodus of Muslim Royinghas from Myanmar to Bengal to the abuses of the Burmese Buddhist army. It involved launching the second phase of the war of civilizations: the first phase after the Muslims’ attack on Christians, the second phase after the Buddhists’ attack on Muslims. However, the operation was interrupted when Saudi Arabia ceased its support for the Rohingya Salvation Army, whose headquarters were in Mecca[7].
Ultimately, the United States, Iran and Iraq drove Daesh out of Iraq, while Syria and Russia drove them from Syria.
Three days before the attacks in Sri Lanka, the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs sent a secret cable to its embassy in Colombo. It ordered him to confine all his staff as much as possible for three days and to absolutely forbid him to frequent the places that would be destroyed by the attacks (source: Alahed News).
Finally, a vast operation was organized by Daesh in Sri Lanka on the occasion of the Christian holiday of Easter, April 21, 2019, resulting in the slaughter of 258 people and the wounding of 496.
The restoration of the Caliphate, which was conceived in 1928 by Hassan el-Banna, had been attempted by President Anwar el-Sadat for his personal benefit and cost him his life. It was finally realized by Daesh, but ended in failure. The resistance of the Arab populations was too fierce and President Trump’s political opposition did not allow the experiment to continue. It is not possible at this time to know whether the Islamic Emirate had a mandate from the Guide to proclaim itself in Caliphate or whether it used its Western support to do so. In any case, the jihadists are not going to stop there.
(To be continued…)
Notes:
[1] « John McCain, le chef d’orchestre du “printemps arabe”, et le Calife », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 18 août 2014.
[2] “Israeli general says al Qaeda’s Syria fighters set up in Turkey”, Dan Williams, Reuters, January 29, 2014.
[3] Document Onu S/2016/94. « Rapport de Renseignement russe », Réseau Voltaire, 29 janvier 2016.
[4] « Jihadisme et industrie pétrolière », par Thierry Meyssan, Al-Watan (Syrie) , Réseau Voltaire, 23 juin 2014.
[5] “Hacked Emails Link Turkish Minister to Illicit Oil”, Ahmed Yayla, World Policy, October 17, 2016.
[6] Document Onu S/2016/298. « Rapport de Renseignement russe sur le trafic d’antiquités de Daesh », Réseau Voltaire, 8 mars 2016.
[7] « L’islam politique contre la Chine », par Thierry Meyssan, Réseau Voltaire, 3 octobre 2017.
- Part V: The First Setbacks of the Muslim Brotherhood
- Part IV: The Muslim Brotherhood as Members of the White House National Security Council
- Part III: The Muslim Brotherhood as a Supplement to the Pentagon and NATO’s Gladio
- Part II: The Muslim Brotherhood as an Auxiliary Force of MI6 and CIA
- Part I: The Muslim Brotherhood as Assassins
