Nafeez Mossadeq Ahmed on the liquid bomb plot

[Paul Rigby]

Calibrating fear: The liquid bomb plot and the long war
By Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

The conviction of Abdullah Ahmed Ali, 28, Tanvir Hussain, 28, and Assad Sarwar, 29, in relation to the liquid bomb plot has been seen as a major triumph for British police and intelligence efforts. Yet, despite this being the second re-trial, the prosecution was still only able to convict the three for conspiracy to murder, including their intent to bring down an airplane – but not to prove their capability to carry out the plot.

Questions raised by this newspaper last year about the technical viability of the plot also remain unanswered. For the plot to work, hydrogen peroxide would need to be present in at least 30 per cent concentration, a state in which it is highly unstable; and it is unclear from the prosecution’s case how the plotters would have supplied the necessary input of oxygen at high concentration to enable an explosion.

Perhaps the biggest unanswered questions remain about individuals allegedly linked to the plot whom the police have shown no interest in arresting or prosecuting. Rashid Rauf, a British citizen of Pakistani ethnic origin, who before this plot, was already wanted by police for murdering his uncle, was described as the plot’s al-Qa’ida mastermind, coordinating it from Pakistan. According to British police sources, Rauf was pre-emptively detained by Pakistani intelligence services under maximum security in August 2006 under US Government orders, an act which jeopardised the ongoing intelligence operation to gather hard evidence about the plotters. Rauf then became an original source for information about the plot, which, according to human rights organisations was obtained through torture.

But despite Rauf’s pivotal role in the case, for over a year the British Government refused to seek his extradition to the UK to stand trial for his alleged role as the plot’s ‘mastermind’. Official British disinterest in prosecuting the alleged al-Qa’ida ‘mastermind’ of the liquid bomb plot was compounded by Rauf’s inexplicable escape from Pakistani maximum security detention, and then by his reported extra-judicial assassination by a US drone late last year.

British authorities also displayed no interest in arresting or prosecuting another individual who was allegedly central to the plot, who is under 24-hour surveillance in the UK, has been named by the US Treasury, UN Security Council and UK Treasury, as a terror recruiter and fundraiser with links to al-Qa’ida and the Taliban, who has sent men to Pakistan for terror training. Although intelligence sources say that surveillance of him led them to the airline plotters, he remains at large.

British authorities are now considering a third re-trial to try to convict several other defendants in the liquid bomb plot trial about whom the jury could not agree to a verdict of guilt. The desire to use the judicial system to vindicate the Government’s claim to having successfully foiled “Britain’s 9/11” is unfortunately not matched by an equal willingness to investigate the role of dubious US and British intelligence policies, which appear to have incubated terrorist groups in Pakistan. As noted by Craig Murray, former British Ambassador to Uzbekistan, “the key question... is who put these useless idiots up to it? How far does surveillance and penetration blend into instigation by agents provocateurs?”

Last year, this newspaper noted that the plotters had reportedly travelled to Pakistan under cover of doing humanitarian work, where they underwent terrorist training in camps in the Balochistan province run by terrorist organisation Jundullah. Jundullah, an al-Qa’ida linked group formerly headed by alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, has reportedly “been secretly trained by American officials” due to their carrying out cross-border raids against Iran.

A central player in these policies is the Pakistan’s intelligence services (ISI), which Anglo-American authorities insist not only on protecting, but on supporting. Pakistani sources said that while in Pakistan, the plotters had been “exploited by agents provocateurs” amongst ISI, who wanted to “guide them to carry out attacks.”

The troublesome role of the ISI is highlighted by recent revelations that the agency has continued to provide military and financial support to al-Qa’ida and Taliban forces in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. Current Pakistani Army chief, Gen Pervez Kiani, served as head of the ISI from 2004 to 2007, during which according to a NATO report, the ISI administered two training camps for the Taliban in Balochistan. For a single offensive in Kandahar in September 2006, the ISI had provided Taliban forces with 2,000 rocket-propelled grenades and 400,000 rounds of ammunition.

Evidence of the ISI’s covert assistance to the Afghan insurgency under Kiani’s leadership has been circulated to the highest echelons of the US Government and the White House. Despite this, reports US national security expert Dr Gareth Porter, “Senior officials of the Barack Obama administration persuaded the US Congress to extend military assistance to Pakistan for five years without any assurance that the Pakistani assistance to the Taliban had ended.”

Although officials claim that the military operations in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan are about fighting terrorists, a more likely motive is the Trans-Afghan pipeline planned to run from across southern Afghanistan, across Pakistan to Caspian reserves - bypassing US-British rivals like Iran, Russia and China. Current NATO operations are focused on clearing the area where the pipeline will run. Three months before 9/11, US officials warned the Taliban that they would face military action if they failed to make peace with the Northern Alliance in a federal government that would provide stability to allow the pipeline project to go through.

This still raises questions about continued Anglo-American support for the ISI despite its ongoing support for the insurgency. According to a confidential report to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Professor Ola Tunander of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), the US strategy is to “support both sides in the conflict” so as to “calibrate the level of violence” in Afghanistan to prolong the war. This strategy is instrumental to a wider geopolitical objective of protecting a US-dominated unipolar order against escalating trends toward economic multipolarity and the rising power of major rivals.

“The U.S.A.’s superior military strength and intelligence hegemony could only be translated into power and real global strength if there were ongoing conflicts – wars and terrorist attacks – that threatened the multipolar power structure of the economic-political world order,” continues the Norwegian report. “Accordingly, from a European or Chinese or Japanese point of view, every US war, wherever it is fought, is not just directed against a local insurgent or an anti-American ruler, it is directed against the economic-political multipolar power structure that would give Europe, China and Japan a significant position in the world.” By fanning the flames on both sides in Afghanistan, US forces are able to “increase and decrease the military temperature and calibrate the level of violence” with a view to permanently “mobilize other governments in support of US global policy.”

In this sense, the ‘War on Terror’ functions as an ideological narrative that underpins the capacity of the British and American states to sustain geopolitical dominance over an increasingly fragile and changing international system. While the threat of al-Qa’ida terrorism should not be underestimated, solutions focusing on the expansion of military and police powers are counterproductive, serving only to buttress these dubious geopolitical agendas.

If the liquid bomb plot trial shows anything, it is that our out-of-control state intelligence policies continue to foster the enemy we are supposed to be fighting – both in supporting networks and agencies that back terrorist groups, and in continuing to generate the overwhelming civilian casualties that extremists exploit to recruit to their unholy cause.

Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed is Executive Director of the Institute for Policy Research & Development (http://www.iprd.org.uk) and the author of The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006). His terrorism research was used by the 9/11 Commission, and he has testified to the US Congress.
©Dr Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed

http://www.muslimnews.co.uk/paper/index....ticle=4267

[Peter Presland]

I have a slightly ambivalent view of NMA. He has complex roots in communities that have every reason to be suspicious of the UK State and the Western narrative of the world. He does impressive detailed research and much of his stuff is very useful as a sort of archive of all the detail missed or deliberately obfuscated by the MSM.

That said he is clearly determined not to burn his bridges with MSM and official sources, even if he does appear to be a thorn in their side at times. It is that side of him that makes me a bit wary. His 7/7 book is a case in point. Good solid research that mentions pretty well all the publicly known facts and fictions and gives them a time-line - but then fails to follow through and even hint at interpretations that he must surely accept as possibilities but which he also knows would be total anathema to officialdom.

His orthodox use of the words 'terrorism' and 'terrorist', his copious references to 'al-Qaeda' and the 'Taliban', in fact the entire semantic framework of most of his stuff is orthodox - and in my view his work suffers as a consequence.

His piece on the liquid bomb plot is useful though. I'm particularly impressed that Ola Tunander's work (that name again - thanks Peter L) gets serious attention because I regard it as hitting the bulls eye on US/UK dealings with the ISI and the Pakistan/Central Asia situation in general. I'd love to get my hands on that confidential report too. Maybe an email request to NMA or OT would work?

[David Guyatt]

This still raises questions about continued Anglo-American support for the ISI despite its ongoing support for the insurgency. According to a confidential report to the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs by Professor Ola Tunander of the International Peace Research Institute in Oslo (PRIO), the US strategy is to “support both sides in the conflict” so as to “calibrate the level of violence” in Afghanistan to prolong the war. This strategy is instrumental to a wider geopolitical objective of protecting a US-dominated unipolar order against escalating trends toward economic multipolarity and the rising power of major rivals.

(my bolding)

So as to calibrate the level of violence. Does this means what I think it means, namely causing violence to spiral higher via false flag operations? Or am I simply being too cynical?

[Peter Presland]

So as to calibrate the level of violence. Does this means what I think it means, namely causing violence to spiral higher via false flag operations? Or am I simply being too cynical?

I personally doubt it is possible to be too cynical when it comes to the covert operations of States in pursuit of their hidden agendas.

My reading of Tunander on this is that the US has massive logistical capability to provoke unrest and violence between potentially antagonistic factions, communities and small states. Couple the logistical with the in-depth 'intelligence' resulting from UK historical involvement plus massive ongoing surveillance and communications intercepts and the result is the ability to 'calibrate the level of violence' in a manner to precisely suit the objectives du jour. Whether one or other of the parties to the violence is an ostensible ally simply does not enter into the matter other than as just another variable to be included in the overall calculation.

US/UK dealing with the Reds and Whites in post WW1 Russia is probably a good analogy.

I have no doubt whatsoever that, if a major terrorist attack involving large civilian casualties were calculated as likely to seriously assist US objectives in Central Asia, then such an attack would inevitably occur. I also doubt that ANY of the major 'terrorist' attacks all over the world in recent years have occurred without the involvement of one or other (or a combination of) the Western SIS's and the countries where the attacks happened.

[David Guyatt]

I agree entirely Peter. Northern Ireland comes to mind as a domestic example where certain members of the armed forces were tasked to go out in the streets to randomly shoot civilians, I understand. Then there was the case of the Omagh bomb where it was later learned that one of the members of the "Real IRA" who were responsible, was a British Army soldier.

Lots like this too, including some bombing events on the mainland that ostensibly was the responsibility of the IRA.

Then there was that strange event in Iraq that hit the headlines in 2005 where two British SAS soldiers - members of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment - were arrested after a gun battle with Iraqi police, whereupon it was (according to Iraqi security officials anyway) found that their car held explosives and a remote controlled detonator.

[Paul Rigby]

I have a slightly ambivalent view of NMA. He has complex roots in communities that have every reason to be suspicious of the UK State and the Western narrative of the world. He does impressive detailed research and much of his stuff is very useful as a sort of archive of all the detail missed or deliberately obfuscated by the MSM.

That said he is clearly determined not to burn his bridges with MSM and official sources, even if he does appear to be a thorn in their side at times. It is that side of him that makes me a bit wary. His 7/7 book is a case in point. Good solid research that mentions pretty well all the publicly known facts and fictions and gives them a time-line - but then fails to follow through and even hint at interpretations that he must surely accept as possibilities but which he also knows would be total anathema to officialdom.

His orthodox use of the words 'terrorism' and 'terrorist', his copious references to 'al-Qaeda' and the 'Taliban', in fact the entire semantic framework of most of his stuff is orthodox - and in my view his work suffers as a consequence.

His piece on the liquid bomb plot is useful though. I'm particularly impressed that Ola Tunander's work (that name again - thanks Peter L) gets serious attention because I regard it as hitting the bulls eye on US/UK dealings with the ISI and the Pakistan/Central Asia situation in general. I'd love to get my hands on that confidential report too. Maybe an email request to NMA or OT would work?

I'm half-way through his The London Bombings: An Independent Inquiry (Duckworth, 2006), and would largely agree with the above. The phrase "licensed-jester" springs to mind. The publisher, incidentally, is tres spooky.

[Ed Jewett]

An interesting discussion...

Googling the term 'calibrate the violence' turns up some indications that the phrase or concept has gained wider acceptance. One of the more interesting ones, perhaps a parallel in socio-cultural terms, comes from a discussion of the use of an "R" rating of a movie and the MPAA ratings system itself: "Producers and directors routinely calibrate language, violence and sexual situations to win a desired rating." This is certainly consistent with definitions of calibration which connote a tweaking to achieve something. In War by Other Means: The Problem of Political Control in Irish Republican Strategy[/FONT], [/FONT] Armed Forces & Society: An Interdisciplinary Journal[/FONT], September 22, 2000[/FONT], the authors seem to argue a Clausewitzian line that "As war results from political purpose this "intelligence" will "remain the supreme consideration" in its conduct." [See http://www.accessmylibrary.com/article-1...oblem.html ] The prevailing themes seem to be that there are parties who are "tweaking" so as to insure the continuation of conflict without letting it get out of control. Chris Floyd and Arthur Silber discuss the abuse of intelligence; see http://www.chris-floyd.com/. And there's a RAND document out there by C. Christine Fair for the USAF on counter-terror coalitions and cooperation with India and Pakistan that uses the term. And three weeks ago, William S. Lind over at http://www.d-n-i.net/dni/ had an article on the Taliban's Air Force and the concept of a "pseudo-op" ("where one side dresses up in the other side’s uniforms or otherwise duplicates his signatures, then does something that works against the goals of the simulated party"). No, David Guyatt, I don't think you're too cynical.