Mateen was born in the United States in 1986, after his parents immigrated to this country from Afghanistan. Mateen’s father, Siddique Mateen is prominent figure in Afghan politics with his own television program. Siddique Mateen has met with members of the US Congress to discuss Afghan policy. Siddique Mateen apparently lobbied Congress, telling US representatives that Pakistan was responsible for terrorism in Afghanistan. He had a meeting with the US State Department as recently as April of this year. In one his youtube videos, he announced that he was running for President of Afghanistan in a future election.
Siddique Mateen came to the United States, where his son was born in 1986, because at the time he and many other fanatically right-wing and religious Afghans were closely cooperating with the United States and Saudi Arabia.
A Product of Brzeziski’s “Afghan Trap”
In 1978, the US-backed regime in Afghanistan, led by a member of the Royal Family named Daoud Kahn, began a harsh crackdown on leftists and progressive activists in collaboration with the US Central Intelligence Agency. In response there was an uprising that toppled the government. The “Saur Revolution” ended the British-installed monarchist regime and established a democratic republic.
The Soviet aligned Marxist-Leninist group called the “People’s Democratic Party” was elected and became the de facto ruling party, despite having virtually no support among rural peasants. The new government was based in the urban areas among intellectuals, students, and labor unionists, and turned to the Soviet Union for support.
In an interview, Zbigneiw Brzezinski, a top advisor to US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan referred to these events of 1978 as “the Afghan trap.” The United States had arranged the crackdown and pre-mature revolution in Afghanistan. The intent was to lure the Soviet Union into Afghanistan, and according to Brzezinski, give them “their own Vietnam.”
Omar Mateen’s father was part of US-aligned efforts to undermine the People’s Democratic Party. These forces worked with Osama Bin Laden, the heir of a wealthy construction company in Saudi Arabia, to mobilize an army called “Mujahadeen” (Holy Warriors) to fight against the People’s Democratic Party, and their allies in the Soviet Union.
Afghans in the countryside, who were deeply religious and hostile to the secularism of new government, were armed by the United States and trained by religious fanatics from Saudi Arabia. The fighters embraced Wahabbism, the Saudi Kingdom’s distortion of the Islamic faith, which calls for an archaic and repressive religious state and the slaughter of non-believers. With CIA guns and weapons, along with money from Saudi Arabia and heroin traffickers, these Wahabbi extremists terrorized the People’s Democratic Party.
Volunteers for the People’s Democratic Party’s literacy campaign were hanged by Mujahadeen forces for teaching women to read. Mujahideen fighters also poured acid on the faces of women who refused to wear burkhas, scarring them for life.
At the time the leaders of the United States voiced no objection to these criminal activities that their successors now describe as “Islamic Terrorism” and “Islamic Extremism.” Instead of opposing these activities, US President Ronald Reagan invited members of the Mujahideen to the White House as honored guests. Jimmy Carter re-instated the draft registration and openly talked of sending US troops to Afghanistan in order to aid the Mujahideen in Afghanistan.
Siddique Mateen, the father of the killer in Orlando, openly aligned himself with fanatical Wahabbi extremist forces, and was allowed to migrate to the United States as an ally during the US spawned “civil war.” Siddique Mateen lived in New York City and was an open supporter of the Taliban government that seized power in Afghanistan after the People’s Democratic Party was finally defeated in 1992. As a prominent person in Afghanistan, Siddique Mateen had a television program and regularly commented on Afghan politics. He seems to have had a particular hatred for Pakistan, and emphasized this is in many of his broadcasts.
Embracing Wahabbi Hatred & Admiring Murderers
Siddique Mateen’s son, apparently mentally ill, had embraced the ideology that his father aligned with, an ideology that Saudi Arabia, and the CIA promoted among his countryfolk in Afghanistan. Omar Mateen may have been somewhat culturally alienated, coming from a Wahabbi aligned and religious Afghan family, and growing up in a cosmopolitan and socially liberal New York City, before eventually relocating to Florida.
According to his father, Omar Mateen seemed to particularly hate homosexuals, and was very offended by the site of male-male affection, which is not uncommon in New York City, where the Stonewall Inn, the site of a gay uprising in 1969 has become a historical landmark. New York City is known for having a far wider tolerance for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender people than many other parts of the United States, and neighborhoods like Greenwich Village and Chelsea served as gay enclaves many decades before a large Gay Rights Movement came into existence.
Hatred for homosexuals is a big part of the poisonous Wahabbism that both Siddique Mateen and Omar Mateen seem to have embraced. Under the US-aligned regime in Saudi Arabia, homosexuality is punished by decapitation or in some cases, flogging to the point of death. The Mujihadeen in Afghanistan and the Taliban government carried out similar policies. US-aligned gulf states like Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain are notorious for executing and torturing homosexuals and gender non-conforming individuals. However, well-funded “LGBT Rights” organizations tend to ignore the atrocities of US aligned regimes, and coordinate their international propaganda to serve US foreign policy goals.
While Siddique Mateen seems to have mellowed out a little, and backed away from some of the Wahabbi extremism he aligned with during the Afghan Civil War, his son looked on with admiration to the Wahabbi fanatics currently operating in Iraq and Syria. Omar Mateen visited the Wahabbi regime of Saudi Arabia twice.
Before mercilessly slaughtering 50 people at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando, Omar Mateen called 9-11 and swore allegiance to the Islamic State Organization, also known as ISIS.
Just like the Mujahideen and Taliban that his father worked with in Afghanistan, the Islamic State organization is also the product of US foreign policy. The Islamic State is a group of Wahabbi fanatics who emerged from within the Free Syrian Army, the Al-Nusra Front, and other groups that have been working to overthrow the Syrian government. The United States, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and Turkey have directly trained and funded all kinds of Islamic terrorist groups in Syria, hoping to remove the ruling Baath Arab Socialist Party. ISIS emerged in 2014 as one pole among the western-spawned terrorist cesspools in the Syrian countryside, and has also seized territories in Iraq.
Like the People’s Democratic Party in Afghanistan, Syria’s ruling Baath Arab Socialist Party is anti-capitalist and had created a strong independent economy. Like the government of Democratic Afghanistan, the Syrian Arab Republic has entered into an alliance with the government of Russia. So, just like Afghanistan in the 1980s, Syria has also been reduced to chaos and civil war. The United States is openly destabilizing the country, hoping to topple the internationally recognized government, supposedly because of concerns about “human rights.” Over 400,000 Syrians have died in this civil war, and millions have become refugees.
It is unclear at this point whether Omar Mateen cooperated with other Wahabbis in Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan in planning his merciless slaughter of 50 people at the Orlando nightclub. Regardless of whether he acted alone, inspired by ISIS and his father’s background with the Mujihadeen, or directly in collaboration with other Wahabbi extremists, his actions are a direct result of US foreign policy.
Interestingly, Omar Mateen seems to have posed for many photographs on social media while wearing the logos of the New York City Police Department. The NYPD has a record of harassing and spying on Muslim-Americans, and these photographs may seem inconsistent with his pro-ISIS views, as ISIS claims to practice Sunni Islam. However, there is a psychological, not ideological consistency in his thinking.
The NYPD has a reputation for bullying and openly murdering young people of color such as Ramarley Graham and Sean Bell. If Mateen attended public school in New York, it is he likely saw school officers “cursing at students” and “confiscating student’s lunches,” which, according a report from the New York Civil Liberties Union, is a common occurrence.
The kind of people who conduct mass shootings tend have a kind of psychopathology that glorifies and admires cruelty. Just as Mateen may have come to admire the NYPD for its reputation of brutality, he may have come to admire the torturers and murderers of ISIS for the same reason.
Supporting Terrorism Creates Terrorists
If the leaders of the United States had simply allowed the people of Afghanistan to be ruled by the People’s Democratic Party and to align with the Soviet Union, Osama Bin Laden, one of many wealthy rich kids in Riyahl, would be a historical footnote. Instead, the US unleashed terrorism in Afghanistan and enlisted the young Saudi billionaire to start a global terrorist network.
Furthermore, if the United States had allowed the Syrian Arab Republic to maintain its independent economy and alliance with Russia, then “ISIS” would still be a word that brought to mind an ancient Egyptian deity, not beheading videos and the mass slaughter of civilians. Instead of tolerating an independent Arab Nationalist government in Syria, the United States has funded and facilitated a civil war that has killed 400,000 people and created a mass refugee crisis. Even as ISIS continues its horrific campaign of violence, the NATO regimes cannot cease their mantra of “Assad Must Go!” and continue to foment chaos in the country.
Wahabbi terrorism, which is constantly called “Islamic Extremism” and “Islamic Terrorism” in US media, has been directly facilitated and promoted by US leaders. That Omar Mateen’s father’s entire political career is a result of this fact. Not only in Afghanistan, but all across the world, the United States has armed and trained Wahabbi extremists to act as foot soldiers against independent governments.
Many of the forces in Libya who were part of the foreign-backed “revolution” supported by NATO bombs, were Wahabbi religious extremists. Since the destruction of the Islamic Socialist government in 2011, many of these forces have sworn allegiance to ISIS.
In Yemen, the United States is supporting Saudi Arabia, as it fights in alliance with both ISIS and Al-Queda to topple the Revolutionary Committee and restore the dictatorship of Mansour Hadi. US leaders are providing satellite support to the Saudi military, and Pentagon brass are in Saudi Arabia providing hands-on instructions for the bombing and invasion of Yemen.
The United States continues to arm Turkey as it keeps wide sections of its Syrian border open, allowing arms and supplies to flow into the hands of ISIS. Turkey, armed by the United States, continues to conduct airstrikes against the Kurdish People’s Defense Units (YPG) who are key in fighting against ISIS. While Obama has criticized Turkey for these airstrikes, essentially protecting ISIS from YPG fighters, the US continues to supply Turkey with the cruise missiles to do it.
The latest publications of the Council on Foreign Relations, the prominent foreign policy think tank that is accurately described as the brain of the CIA, characterize the governments of Central Asia as “Russian puppets.” Wahabbi terrorist groups in Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Azerbaijan, and other countries are being supported by Saudi Arabia in an effort to push back Russian and Chinese influence in Central Asia.
Beginning in the direct aftermath of the Second World War, the United States supplied training and weapons to Islamic Chechens as they fought against the Soviet Union and later the Russian Federation. These forces began to adopt the Wahabbi ideology during the 1980s, after Saudi Arabia became key in supplying the weapons and training for their insurgency.
The Islamic Republic of Iran currently faces terrorism at the hands of Jundallah, a Wahabbi organization that operates on its Afghan border, importing heroin and bombing civilian targets. Members of the US Port Authority Police infiltrated Jundallah, and refused to warn Iranian officials about pending terrorist attacks. It is widely suspected that the United States and Saudi Arabia fund and support Jundallah, as it fights to topple the Islamic Republic of Iran and replace it with a Sunni government. The Mujahideen E-Khalq, another anti-Iranian terrorist group, has openly cooperated with US and Israeli intelligence services.
A number of Saudi funded Wahabbi sects set up shop in the aftermath of the US invasion in 2003. The Islamic Republic of Iran has sent its forces to aid the Shia community of Iraq as Sunni extremists have attacked them and destroy important holy sites.
A recently declassified e-mail from Hillary Clinton speculates that a Sunni-Shia War across the entire Middle East “might not be such a bad thing” for “Israel and its western allies.” As Saudi Arabia funds Takfiri extremist groups, and promotes anti-Shia conspiracy theories about a “Shia Crescent,” such a thing might come to pass.
As the wave of horrific killings by ISIS aligned and ISIS-inspired terrorists continues across the United States and Europe, western leaders refuse to change course. They continue to align with and enable the very people who are unleashing terrorism against their populations.
Secretary of State Ashton Carter has said that Russia and China are a “greater threat” than ISIS. The United States and its allies continue to conduct a passive alliance with ISIS and other Wahabbi extremists, while at the same time claiming they are working to “dismantle terrorist organizations.”
The governments of Russia and China have never attacked the United States. The Islamic Republic of Iran has never attacked the United States. Neither have the governments of Bolivia, Nicaragua, Cuba, and Venezuela. The Syrian Arab Republic has never attacked the United States, and neither has the Revolutionary Committee of Yemen.
Yet it is these independent socialist, nationalist or revolutionary governments that are the targets of US sanctions, “regime change,” and destabilization. At the same time that independent governments are targeted, the US continues to facilitate the rise of Wahabbi extremists, and to align with regimes like Saudi Arabia and Turkey that are openly doing so.
Such policies will only result in more attacks. Supporting terrorism creates more terrorists and more horrendous events like what took place in Orlando.
Caleb Maupin is a political analyst and activist based in New York. He studied political science at Baldwin-Wallace College and was inspired and involved in the Occupy Wall Street movement, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
