5. Al-Qaeda in the Asia-Pacific
The roots of the Abu-Sayyaf, the most prominent terrorist group in the Philippines, lead us straight back to al-Qaeda. In the mid-1980s, Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf nominally headed an alliance of extremist armed groups financed by Osama bin Laden, among others, and influenced by Saudi Wahabism. He established a notorious but secretive “university” – Dawal al-Jihad – in the north of Peshawar, which functioned as a major terrorist training camp. Roughly 20,000 mujahideen from 40 countries – including the Philippines – were trained there by Pakistani military intelligence (ISI) with extensive CIA support in the form of expertise, weapons, and funds. Many of these fighters were in search of “other wars to fight,” including in the Phlippines, the Middle East, north Africa, and New York. It was not long before “a nucleus of Abu Sayyaf fighters had moved to the Philippines and were operating there under that name.” The Philippines division of the Abu Sayyaf group conducted “kidnappings and bomb attacks on Christian and government targets” in the south. Among those coordinating operations in the Philippines with Afghan veterans of Abu Sayyaf was al-Qaeda operative Ramzi Yousef, the mastermind of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing plot and an author of Project Bojinka. The first half of Bojinka was implemented by Abu Sayyaf on December 11, 1994, in the bombing of Philippines Airlines flight between Manila and Tokyo, and the targeting of 11 other American airliners over the Pacific on the same day. The latter plot failed due to the FAA’s tighter security measures, but the plot was traced back by Philippine police and the FBI to Abu Sayyaf/al Qaeda operative Yousef. The other half of Bojinka was eventually implemented on 9/11, involving a scheme to fly civilian planes into key US buildings. (39) Another member of the Abu Sayyaf terror cell in Manila was 9/11 mastermind Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, a key al-Qaeda leader who participated in Yosef’s Bojinka Operation. He lived only a few floors from Yousef. (40)

According to Washington DC’s Center for Defense information: “Abu Sayyaf-al Qaeda links are strong. Many of its fighters claim to have trained in Afghanistan, including as many as 20 who were in the graduating class of a Mazar-e Sharif camp in 2001… Zamboanga City, a Mindanao Islamic hotbed, was frequented by members of al Qaeda. Janajalani forged a close relationship with Saudi businessman Mohammed Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden’s brother-in-law, who set up a network of Islamic charities used to fund Abu Sayyaf fighters. Khalifa’s “main organization, the International Islamic Relief Organization, has an office in Zamboanga, as does a bin Laden foundation. Abu Sayyaf received training and momey funneled through Khalifa’s network.” (41)

Clandestine official connivance in the activities of al-Qaeda’s Abu Sayyaf group has also been documented by a leading member of the Philippine government, Senator Aquilino Q. Pimentel Jr. Former law professor Pimentel has been involved in Philippine politics for over 30 years, has been Senator of the Republic since 1998, and is a respected legislator. In a July 2000 speech before the Philippine Senate, he disclosed some startling evidence of joint US-Philippine government involvement in the emergence and activities of Abu Sayyaf:

Because the Abu Sayyaf was operating on the fringe of the Muslim insurgency in the country, its participants were enticed by certain officers of the armed forces to serve as informers on the activities of the Muslim insurgents in Southern Mindanao… at least, three military and police officers (were ) coddlers or handlers of the Abu Sayyaf.

These officers hold very high posts. “One was the commanding general of the Muslims at that time, Brig. Gen. Guillermo Ruiz; the other two were police officers, Chief Supt. Leandro mendoza and Chief Supt. Rodolfo mendoza,” continued Senator Pimentel:

My information is that the Abu Sayyaf partisans were given military intelligence services IDs, safe-houses, safe-conduct passes, firearms, cell phones and various sorts of financial support.

Edwin Angeles, a leader of the Abu Sayyaf in Basilan, told me after the elections of 1995, that it was the Abu Sayyaf that was responsible for the raid and the razing down of the town of Ipil, Zamboanga del Sur in early 1995. In that raid, Angeles told me that the Abu Sayyaf raiders were reportedly provided with military vehicles, mortars and assorted firearms. All this time, Angeles was “handled” – by police officers, now chief superintendant, Rodolfo mendoza.

According to Senator Pimentel, these Philippine military and police “handlers” funneled CIA assistance in the form of both weapons and finances to Abu Sayyaf: ”... these officers did not only ‘handle’ the Abu Sayyaf, they coddled them, trained them, protected them, passed on military equipment and funds from the CIA and its support network, and probably even from the intelligence funds of the armed forces to them.

... The evidence is now overwhelming – unassailable in my mind – that the CIA was the procreator of the Abu Sayyaf and that some of our own military officers acted as midwives at its delivery and who have nursed the hooligans under illegal, if not, at least, questionable circumstances that enabled the latter to pursue their criminal activities to this day. (42)

The US military works extremely closely with the Philippine military, providing weapons, advice, and extensive training. For instance, nearly 1,000 US combat troops were sent to the southern islands of Mindanao, Basilan, and Jolo in 2002 to join with thousands of Philippine troops supposedly hunting Abu Sayyaf. So closely are US military officers and and soldiers liasing with their Philippine counterparts that Operation Balikatan (“shoulder to shoulder”) commands US troops to accompany Philippine military patrols with permission to fight in self-defense. According to US Major Cynthia Teramae: “We are here as counterparts. We will be working alongside each other. We have two co-directors and two co-generals. It shows the kind of relationship that we have.” (43)

It is not a surprise then that the key US objective in the Philippines is not the elimination of terror. One the contrary US-backed Philippine state-sponsored terror appears to have provided a crucial justification within the “War on Terror” narrative for the expansion of US military power in the region and the consolidation of US economic control. “The important thing is to have a safe and stable security environment for domestic and foreign investors, including US entrepreneurs,” remarked US Assistant Secretary of Commerce, William Lash, in a January 2002 visit to Manila. indeed, according to former Philippine President Fidel Ramos, the US aim in the Philippines “is to maintain a viable presence in Asia-Pacific as a means to secure their own interests and their huge investments.” (44)

6. Al-Qaeda in the Caucasus
The Chechen resistance movement to Russian occupation has for some time been increasingly penetrated and manipulated by al-Qaeda. According to R.P. Eddy, former Director of Counterterrorism at the White House National Security Council, at the end of the Afghan war in 1989, “a multinational force of mujahidin slithered into Chechnya” led by “Omar ibn al Khattab, who had trained in bin Laden’s camps. Bin Laden and Khattab enjoyed an unusually close theological affinity, and exchanged personnel and resources.” Khattab was appointed operations chief “under the overall commander, Shamil Basayev. Like Khattab, Basayev had trained in al Qaeda camps and was personally close to bin Laden.” (45) Basayev himself has admitted to reporters that he ‘visited training camps in Afghanistan three times in the early 1990s to study the tactics of guerrila warfare. In Chechnya, he and Khattab built their own training camp in the village of Serzen-Yurt, complete with advanced communications equipment.” (46)

Since the mid-1990s, bin Laden has funded Chechen guerilla leaders Shamil Basayev and omar Ibn Khattab, sidelining the moderate Chechen majority, “to the tune of several millions of dollars per month” according to the asia Times:

Khattab, after the outbreak of the second Chechen war in 1999, aligned ever more closely with the most radical Chechen elements around Shamil Basayev and Arbi Barayev, sidelining more moderate chechen leader Aslan Maskhadov. Not only did significant funds and guns flow from al-Qaeda to Khattab; chechens also received training in Afghanistan and an Islamic “learning center” preaching strict Wahhabism (and at one point counting 1,000 recruits to the Islamic jihad cause) was established in Chechnya. (47)

Indeed, Russian and US sources confirm that by 1999, al-Qaeda mujahideen from Afghanistan, Pakistan, Egypt, and Sudan, with heavy financing from bin Laden, were involved in Basayev’s insurrection. According to Bodansky, the mujahideen force consisted of 10,000 fighters trained in al-Qaeda camps. Shortly before Basayev’s invasion of Dagestan, Osama bin laden himself “made a weeklong visit to a training camp in the village of Serzhen-Yurt in Chechnya.” (48)

Russian co-optation of Basayev and the Chechen resistance is longstanding. Patrick Cockburn – visiting fellow at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC – notes for instance that: “In 1992-93 (Basayev) is widely believed to have received assistance from the GRU when he and his brother Shirvani fought in Abkhazia, a breakaway part of Georgia. Russia did not want to act overtly against Georgia but covertly supported a battalion of volunteers led by Mr. Basayev.” (49)

Forbes senior editor and historian – the late Paul Klebnikov – in his book, Godfather of the Kremlin, notes the widely acknowledged fact that “Kremlin oligarch Boris Berezovsky gave the al Qaeda-connected Chechen terrorist leader Shamil Basayev $1 million prior to the 1999 Dagestan incursion that triggered the latest Chechen conflict.” Klebnikov reports that “Berezovsky, together with other members of the Yeltsin inner circle, had long maintained a secret relationship with Chechen extremists…

To the extent Berezovsky represented the interests of the Yeltsin regime in Chechnya, the Kremlin had been undermining the (Chechen) moderates, supporting the extremists financially and politically, and consequently sowing the seeds of conflict… the Berezovsky strategy with the Chechen warlords was a deliberate attempt to fan the flames of war.

According to Boris Kagarlitsky, a political scientist at the Russian Academy of Sciences who is also adviser to the Russian Parliament, writing in Novaya Gazeta (January 24, 2000), Shamil Basayev and his brother have long been special agents of the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff. In an article titled “Who blew up Russia” in the February 2000 edition of Versiya, another researcher Pyotr Praynishnikov reported that “Chechnya’s terrorists had been trained by the GRU – by Russia’s SPETSNAZ (special diversionary troops).” The Basayev brothers, Shamil and Shirvani, were “both recruited as agents by the Main Intelligence Directorate of the Russian General Staff (GRU) in 1991-2.” Indeed, Basayev was initially recruited by the GRU to “organize kidnappings, bombings and airline hijackings in Russia and Abkhazia.” In 1992, Basayev and his men were allowed by Russian guards to travel freely across the borders into Chechnya. (50)

Ironically, the Russians are not the only ones who have co-opted the al-Qaeda guerillas in Chechnya. US Congressional intelligence and security analyst Yossef Bodansky reports that the US government was actively involved in “yet another anti-Russian jihad” in the “Summer of 2000.” The end of the Cold War, it seems, did not mean the end of the US alliance with the mujahideen:

As if reliving the “good ‘ol days” of Afghanistan of the 1980s, Washington is once again seeking to support and empower the most virulent anti-Western Islamist forces. The US crossed the line in mid-December 1999, when US officials participated in a formal meeting in Azerbaijan in which specific programs for the training and equipping of mujahideen from the Caucasus, Central/South Asia and the Arab world were discussed and agreed upon. This meeting led to Washington’s tacit encouragement of both Muslim allies (mainly Turkey, Jordan and Saudi Arabia) and US “private security companies” (of the type which did the Clinton Administration’s dirty job in the Balkans while skirting and violating the international embargo the US formally supported) to assist the Chechens and their Islamist allies to surge in the Spring of 2000 and sustain the ensuing jihad for a long time.

Thus, the al-Qaeda affiliated Chechen guerillas have been jointly manipulated by both Russian and US intelligence services, although it seems that the two powers have varying interests for doing so. While Russia sees the war with Chechnya as an opportunity to militarize Russian foreign policy and forcefully maintain its military occupation of the region to protect strategic and oil pipeline routes, the US sees the ongoing conflict as a way to do the opposite by “depriv(ing) Russia of a viable pipeline route through spiraling violence and terrorism… US-assisted escalation and expansion of the war in Chechnya should deliver the desired debilitation of Russia.” Thus, the US was “fanning the flames of the Islamist jihad in the Caucasus through covert assistance (and) tacit encouragement of allies to actively support the mujahideen.” (51)

End Part III