Associated Press has revealed that the US-backed, Saudi-led war against Yemen includes the use of Al Qaeda as a mercenary force against Houthi rebels.
This confirms as fact what was widely dismissed by Western politicians and a complicit Western media as a “conspiracy theory” since 2011.
Evidence that the US and its allies enlisted Al Qaeda and other extremist groups to wage serial proxy wars across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA), from Libya and Syria to Yemen, has piled up into a mountain emerging high above the fog of disinformation behind which these wars had been fought.
The AP article titled, “AP Investigation: US allies, al-Qaida battle rebels in Yemen,” would report (emphasis added):
Again and again over the past two years, a military coalition led by Saudi Arabia and backed by the United States has claimed it won decisive victories that drove al-Qaida militants from their strongholds across Yemen and shattered their ability to attack the West.
Here’s what the victors did not disclose: many of their conquests came without firing a shot.
That’s because the coalition cut secret deals with al-Qaida fighters, paying some to leave key cities and towns and letting others retreat with weapons, equipment and wads of looted cash, an investigation by The Associated Press has found. Hundreds more were recruited to join the coalition itself.
AP would also link the Muslim Brotherhood directly to Al Qaeda militants, stating:
In some places, militants join battles independently. But in many cases, militia commanders from the ultraconservative Salafi sect and the Muslim Brotherhood bring them directly into their ranks, where they benefit from coalition funding, the AP found.
This is further evidence exposing the Muslim Brotherhood’s role in preparing the grounds for the US-engineered 2011 “Arab Spring” uprisings and the planned violence that accompanied them.
Of course, while Western leaders and the media attempted to deny complicity in the dominant role Al Qaeda played in conflicts across MENA for years, a look at any conflict map – be it in regards to Syria or Yemen – reveals that pockets of extremists operating in both nations are adjacent to US-Saudi-controlled supply lines and US-Saudi controlled territory – not because the US or Saudi Arabia are fighting Al Qaeda and its affiliates – but because they are protecting and using these extremists to fight their various regional wars on their behalf.
As to why the US and Saudi Arabia might be aiding and abetting Al Qaeda, AP would quote Michael Horton of the Jamestown Foundation. AP would report:
“Elements of the US military are clearly aware that much of what the US is doing in Yemen is aiding AQAP and there is much angst about that,” said Michael Horton, a fellow at the Jamestown Foundation, a US analysis group that tracks terrorism.
“However, supporting the UAE and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia against what the US views as Iranian expansionism takes priority over battling AQAP and even stabilizing Yemen,” Horton said.
However, the US has failed to make a case as to what threat Iran constitutes that is equal or greater to the threat posed by Al Qaeda. It was supposedly Al Qaeda, not Iran that hijacked airliners and crashed them into the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in 2001 – tipping off a now nearly two decade-long “War on Terror.” In fact – Iran has invested blood and treasure in fighting and defeating Al Qaeda and its proxies, including the self-proclaimed “Islamic State” in both Syria and Iraq – contributing directly to both terrorist organizations’ defeat.
It would appear that if Iran is involved in Yemen, it is also clearly fighting against Al Qaeda there as well.
And while the AP investigation presents a coalition of convenience between Al Qaeda and the US-backed Saudi-led coalition – the truth is that Saudi Arabia itself is the original “Islamic State,” having sponsored the perversion and abuse of Islam via Wahhabism since its inception, the recruitment and indoctrination of extremists through a global network of madrases funded by Riyadh sine the Cold War, and the direct arming and backing of terrorist organizations including Al Qaeda as they wage war in Libya, Syria, Iraq, and Yemen.
The US for its part, also – knowingly and willingly – is aiding and abetting Al Qaeda, using them as auxiliaries to fight where US troops cannot either for political or practical reasons.
This is not merely a recent arrangement wrought from stark realism, this was a plan that has been developed over the course of at least three US presidencies – George Bush, Barack Obama, and now Donald Trump.
It was in Seymour Hersh’s 2007 New Yorker piece titled, “The Redirection Is the Administration’s new policy benefitting our enemies in the war on terrorism?” which revealed (emphasis added):
To undermine Iran, which is predominantly Shiite, the Bush Administration has decided, in effect, to reconfigure its priorities in the Middle East. In Lebanon, the Administration has coöperated with Saudi Arabia’s government, which is Sunni, in clandestine operations that are intended to weaken Hezbollah, the Shiite organization that is backed by Iran. The US has also taken part in clandestine operations aimed at Iran and its ally Syria. A by-product of these activities has been the bolstering of Sunni extremist groups that espouse a militant vision of Islam and are hostile to America and sympathetic to Al Qaeda.
Hersh’s article too made a clear link between Al Qaeda extremists, the Muslim Brotherhood and the US and Saudi sponsors preparing both for what his sources claimed was a “cataclysmic conflict.”
Thus Al Qaeda forming the backbone of the US-backed, Saudi-led war in Yemen, or Al Qaeda fighting Washington’s proxy wars in Libya or Syria is no mere coincidence or accident, or even just a recent phenomenon emerging from growing Western desperation to “contain Iran,” but part of a long-planned geopolitical gambit aimed at eliminating Washington’s competitors and establishing itself as sole hegemon over the MENA region.
The revelations should further bolster the moral imperative of Iran and its allies – including Russia, Syria, and Lebanon’s Hezbollah. It should also further undermine the credibility of both the US and its allies, as well as the “international order” they presume dominion over.
Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.
