Russia, the Mexican drug wars, and 9/11

Stratfor has a great article (you need to search for the title in Google and access it through there to see the whole article) on Russia's propensity to reestablish contact with the Soviet Union's old proxy groups, and begin to assert itself abroad more. The article discusses here ways that Russia might try to meddle with the US in the Western hemisphere:

There is also a distinct possibility that through their relationship with the FARC, the Russians could gain entree to open a dialogue with some of the more radical elements of the Latin American drug trafficking organizations, including the hyperviolent Mexican cartels. Even Central American drug trafficking groups like Los Kaibiles, who began life strongly anti-communist, might be willing to accept weapons and funding from “democratic” Russians. Considering that Los Kaibiles are now quite mercenary, they also just might be willing to undertake specific attacks if their price point is met. Many Russian organized criminal groups are closely linked to the Kremlin and are a tool Putin and company are already using. These groups could be used to act as an interface with organized criminal groups elsewhere.

The most interesting possibility to me is Russia fanning the flames of Mexico's drug wars. If the killings started bleeding over more into the US, and the political pressure to seal up the border or even send troops into Mexico got too hot, I can see the US doing something that would isolate it internationally, and generally harm its ability to deal with Russia. A little odd that Stratfor never mentions that the problem could be dealt with in one fell swoop by legalizing the drugs that generate the black market profits that allow the violence to continue.

Though I was disappointed that the article failed to mention what could be Russia's biggest foray back into the Soviet-sponsored terrorism that marked the Cold War: Ayman al-Zawahiri and al-Qaeda.

I think it's becoming more and more obvious that all of these people at Georgetown getting Security Studies degrees and studying al-Qaeda are on the absolute wrong track. The Cold War never ended for Russia – if al-Zawahiri is indeed under Soviet influence, it means that their contact with him after the collapse Soviet Union dates back as early as 1996. Though if al-Zawahiri is an FSB agent, he was probably a KGB agent too – it would explain perfectly why al-Zawahiri tried to get bin Laden and his number two at the time, Sheikh Azzam, to turn away from the Russians and focus on fighting the Americans. When he didn't get his way, he assassinated Azzam and became bin Laden's new second-in-command at the tail end of the '80s. This, unfortunately for the KGB, coincided with the turmoil of the collapse of the USSR, which explains the gap between when al-Zawahiri gained influence over bin Laden (right after the assassination) and when al-Zawahiri started really collaborating with bin Laden to commit attacks against the West rather than the Soviet Union and apostate Muslim countries (right after his release from "prison" in Russia in 1997).

Underappreciated quote

Perhaps the most underappreciated quote of our era. This is from an interview that Alexander Litvinenko (assassinated FSB turncoat) gave to Poland's Fakt newspaper, in which he discusses Russia's role in terrorism, past and present:

Fakt: Every terrorist you have named is from 'the old staff' of the KGB. Could you name someone from recent history?
A. Litvinenko: Certainly, here it is. The number two person in the terrorist organization al Qaeda, who they are crediting with the series of explosions in London, Ayman al-Zawahiri, is an old agent of the FSB. Being sentenced to death in Egypt for terrorism and hunted by Interpol, Ayman al-Zawahiri, in 1998, was in the territory of Dagestan, where for half a year he received special training at one of the educational bases of the FSB. After this training he was transferred to Afghanistan, where he had never been before and where, following the recommendation of his Lubyanka chiefs, he at once ... penetrated the milieu of bin Laden and soon became his assistant in al Qaeda.

Fakt: Could you hint at least, where this data comes from?
A. Litvinenko: I can. During my service in one of the most secret departments of the FSB, top officials from the UFSB of Dagestan, who had directly worked with Ayman al-Zawahiri ... were called to Moscow and received high posts.

That quote goes nicely with this quote about Ayman al-Zawahiri, from bin Laden's chosen biographer Hamid Mir:

He is the person who can do the things that happened on Sept. 11.

Litvinenkapalooza here. All you can eat al-Zawahiri trough here. For more information on al-Zawahiri's time in Russia, check out the Wikipedia page.

Happy birthday Stephen and Ayman

Today, it's my birthday! It's also Ayman al-Zawahiri's birthday – my favorite Islamic jihadist. He merged his terrorist organization Egyptian Islamic Jihad with bin Laden's al-Qaeda throughout the nineties. Osama bin Laden's favored biographer, Hamid Mir, believes that al-Zawahiri is the "real brains of the outfit" once said that "[h]e is the person who can do the things that happened on Sept. 11" Assassinated former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko claimed that right before the 1998 US embassy bombings in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, al-Zawahiri was trained for six months in an FSB camp in Dagestan. The FSB's ties to al-Zawahiri are just another example of Russian sponsorship of most major terrorist groups and rogue nations. In my opinion, it's a way to drive up oil prices (which Putin's cronies' pockets, give them popular support, and threaten Western economies) and thwart the West's liberalization by making totalitarianism more fashionable.

Anyway, for my birthday present, I want anyone who's a regular reader (or, hell, anyone who's reading this) to leave a comment (anonymously will do) saying hello and telling me what they like and dislike about the blog. And, for those who don't know me (don't ruin it!), guess how old I turned today. If not an exact age, then at least a decade.

Putin the puppet master

I had a letter published in Publius Pundit, another one of Kim Zigfeld's blogs. The letter was about possible Russian motivations for backing the Burma's military junta: sparking conflict and raising the price of oil and natural gas. This appears to be a favorite strategy of Putin's regime, as the Russsians seem to have done something similar in Venezuela and Iran by backing Hugo Chávez's and the ayatollahs' regimes. Here is the full text of the letter that I sent in response to this posting:

Dear Publius Pundit,

Here's something else to keep in mind when exploring Russia's relationships with energy-rich states: Russia has huge reserve of oil and natural gas, and any jump in the price of these commodities will first and foremost raise energy revenue that the Russian government receives. Since the resource-driven economic boom is the primary reason why Putin's support is so high (another being those oh-so-convenient Chechens), maintaining high energy prices are key to Putin's ambitions for the Russian state.

This preoccupation with energy, though, leads the Russians to do some pretty treacherous things. For example, in the late 1990s they allegedly trained Ayman al-Zawahiri (bin Laden's sidekick – or perhaps the true leader of al-Qaeda). Just a few months later, al-Zawahiri's terrorist group was incredibly interested in and well-informed of plans by Americans to build a natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan and ease the Russian's quasi-monopoly in the region. Later, al-Qaeda attacks American embassies in East Africa, which was believed by many to be a provocation of the US, trying to get them to enter Afghanistan. Though there was no invasion, the oil pipeline was shelved shortly after the attacks. Interestingly enough, all of this is right about the time when the price of oil starts skyrocketing – in early 1999 the price of oil had fallen to about $12 per barrel, but has increased fairly regularly ever since, to the point where it is now 1000% of the price that it was less than a decade ago. Much of this increase in prices was no doubt due to the ramifications of US policy in the Middle East in response to periodic attacks by al-Qaeda.

And Burma is not the only place where we see Russia abetting regimes that have been drawing the ire of the United States: Iran, too, has been helped by Russia in developing something (at minimum nuclear power, and at most nuclear weapons) that doesn't seem to benefit Russia much at all. Iran (like Burma) is a relatively poor country that wouldn't seem to be in the position to pay lots of money for expensive nuclear reactors, especially given its own enormous energy reserves. Security interests don't seem too great, since both Russia and the US have enough weapons to inflict more damage than they'd ever want, and an attack on Russia by any country is pretty unthinkable. And Russia, by supporting the regimes, is putting itself at risk of being criticized. So what's in it for Russia? An American invasion of Iran – with the world's second-largest reserves of natural gas, and third-largest reserves of oil – would surely send the price of oil skyrocketing past $200 a barrel, and that couldn't be bad for Putin. Just something to think about.

Erratum: it's not actually Kim Zigfeld's blog, but rather a blog for which she's a regular contributer.

Republican warmongers cause spike in oil prices, blame oil companies

Samuel R. Staley from the Reason Foundation has an editorial at the Hawaii Reporter about the irony of Republicans bemoaning high oil and gas prices and blaming the oil companies. An excerpt, recounting the reasons for the recent explosion of energy prices:

The third and most important factor, is what pundits are calling "geopolitical uncertainty."

We are at war in Iraq and still have troops in Afghanistan. Iran wants to rattle our bones by going nuclear and the world is wondering if we will militarily strike them to prevent it. Throw in an anti-Bush politician in charge of Venezuela (our fifth largest supplier of crude oil in February) and the political instability in Nigeria (our fourth largest supplier of crude oil in February) and at least one-fifth of the price of a barrel of oil on the world market is attributed to geopolitical uncertainty according to oil industry analysts.

I'd like to add something: with the exception of instability in Nigeria (of which I know little about), all of the major causes of the uptick in the price of oil have been egged on by the Russia government:

• Russia both supplied Iraq with most of its arms for the last three decades, while at the same time feeding the US intelligence (almost certainly erroneous, and likely intentionally erroneous) about Saddam's affinity for anti-American terrorism. Later, likely hoping to prolong the war and increase the period of instability before the oil started flowing again in Iraq, the Russians fed Saddam intelligence on America's military and war plan.
• Russia has been Iran's nuclear connection, despite the lack of obvious benefit to Russia. America's spat with Iran is the most recent development to raise the "geopolitical price premium" of oil.
• Russian arms were behind Venezuela's latest embarrassment over arming anti-Colombian rebels and the subsequent threat of US invasion and spike in the price of oil.
• Russia supports both the Armenians and the Azeris in the conflict over Nagorno-Karabakh, which has led to uncertainty regarding the West's access in the future to the Caspian Sea as an energy transshipment point.
• During the late Clinton years, Russia trained Ayman al-Zawahiri, who months later officially merged his terrorist organization with bin Laden's al-Qaeda and committed the 1999 US embassy bombings in East Africa, which Lawrence Wright thinks was an attempt to "to lure the United States into Afghanistan." The US responded with cruise missile strikes, and the attacks halted plans for an American-funded gas pipeline in Afghanistan, and ushered in the decade-long period lasting up until today of steadily rising oil prices.

In all of these cases, it wasn't the original sin that made the most impact, but rather then American response to it (or the markets' response to the events in light of recent American posturing). In acts of provocation, the provocateur commits an act that is seen as so egregious that it demands a response, yet the purpose of the attack is not to kill or even to terrorize, but rather to draw the victim into another conflict. When Russian support of anti-American dictators is seen as a tactic for drawing the US into conflict with oil-producing countries, the correct American response is not warmongering, as Putin's American critics would have, but rather a retreat from American imperialism abroad. Just something to think about.

Uzbek spy defects, brings juicy information along with him

This was apparently published a month ago, so it's not exactly news, but it's still fascinating: a high-level Uzbek spy has defected, and he brought some pretty damning information along with him. First of all, he says that Karimov himself (president-for-life of Uzbekistan) ordered the Andijan massacre:

Yakubov says Karimov directly ordered senior military officers to instruct troops to fire on protesters in the eastern city of Andijon in 2005, killing more than 1,500 people -- twice as many as rights groups estimated. Karimov has repeatedly denied that charge.

And not only that, but the terrorist group he blamed on instigating the incident was also funded by the Uzbek government:

In a related charge, Yakubov says the regime itself has propped up many alleged extremist groups and their leaders, including Tahir Yuldash, the purported IMU leader, and Akram Yuldash, the alleged spiritual leader of Akramia, the group Uzbek authorities blamed for sparking the unrest in Andijon.

...and despite propping these radical Islamists, it turns out that the 2004 terrorist attacks that won Uzbekistan so much sympathy abroad were really false-flag operations perpetrated by the Uzbek secret services:

The government blamed the explosions on the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU), a U.S. State Department-designated terrorist group, and Hizb-ut Tahrir, an organization that eschews violence but seeks Islamic rule in Central Asia. Yakubov says that after speaking to an operational officer directly involved in the bombings, he realized that the government itself had prepared them.

False-flag Islamic terrorist attacks aren't exactly a new idea. Uzbekistan's old bosses in the Kremlin have been big fans of creating false terrorist attacks, having orchestrated the 1999 Russian apartment bombings, which were blamed on Chechen Islamic terrorist groups. And then of course, there's Alexander Litvinenko, who alleged that essentially every example of Islamic terrorism is actually a false flag attack committed by the Russian secret services.

The attacks – specifically the aforementioned 2004 bombings in Tashkent and Bukhara – worked remarkably well, and combined with Karimov's previous support of the Americans after 9/11, led Heritage Foundation scholar Ariel Cohen to declare that the bombings were all the more reason for the US to support Karimov's impoverishing and repressive regime:

Clearly, the terrorists' primary concern was not human rights. On the contrary, by provoking secular or moderate Muslim governments to take harsh measures, Islamist terrorists undermine those regimes' international reputations and drive a wedge between them and their democratic allies.

Furthermore, addressing anti-terrorist activities in Central Asia by targeting U.S. allies, abusing human-rights rhetoric and utilizing it to weaken or topple pro-American regimes is self-defeating and nearsighted. Extremists view U.S. sanctions against its allies as weakness. Such measures empower global terror networks to provoke pro-Western regimes.

A militant Islamic takeover of Uzbekistan may provide radicals a state base larger and militarily and technologically more sophisticated than Afghanistan. Moreover, demise of a secular Uzbekistan may have tumultuous consequences for all Central Asia. If Islamists overrun Uzbekistan, weak Central Asian states, such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and even the totalitarian Turkmenistan, may follow. An Uzbekistan controlled by a radical Islamist regime, emergence of a Central Asian Califate, and waning U.S. influence in the region, will leave human rights and individual freedoms worse off than they are now.

...and then there's this cringe-worthy stab at those narrow-sighted human rights advocates:

Leftist-liberal nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) with global reach, which uphold civil rights and ignore Islamist terrorist threats, make Uzbekistan a cause celebre.

While this is a win for those of us who have been trying to show the world that Islamic terrorism is largely a red herring, the real gratification will come when the bigger and badder truths about al-Zawahiri, al-Qaeda, and 9/11 come out. But then again, to quote Star Wars, "many Bothan Russian spies died to bring you this information," but nobody was listening.