May 17, 2002
by Dmitry Stepanenko, Kavkaz Center

For over half a year the US has been continuing the so-called fight against "international terrorism". Past several months allow us to make a pretty firm conclusion that under the guise of the fight against terrorism the American politics is pursuing certain strategic goals. The mentioned fight against mythical evil serves as a tool to achieve these goals.

In order to understand the sense of the US strategic goals, you need to look at what was the consequence of the "war on terrorism" declared by American President George W. Bush.

The most obvious consequence of that was the American troops showing up in Central Asia - the region that has never been in the zone of the US influence up until the present moment. And here is the question: why would the Americans need that?

In order to answer this question it would be advisable to consider a few aspects. The first aspect would be the need to consolidate the "victory" in the Cold War, in kicking Russia out of that strategic region. In order to attain that, the current regimes in the Republics of Central Asia are given the "guarantees of security", and the financial support is promised.

The second important aspect, that causes the current American expansion in Central Asian region is the US attempt not to let Islamic influence spread across the countries of Central Asia.

And here it is no secret that the recognized center of the true Islam for the past five years was the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan. And hence, an important step in the realization of the global American strategy in this country is to overthrow the legitimate Afghan leadership headed by Mullah Omar and plant the puppet regime of Hamid Karzai.

Formal pretext for the US aggression against Afghanistan was blaming the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in the orchestration of the September 11 attacks, even though there were no real proofs of involvement of these organizations in these events presented. What's more, the pictures of the Pentagon building (which was allegedly hit by an unknown plane), that recently appeared on the Internet, are casting doubts on the fact that the mentioned plane existed and those pictures are giving serious grounds to assume about a possible involvement of the US special secret services in the orchestration of the September events.

An indirect evidence of this version is the fact that those "guilty" in the September 11 attacks were named literally several days, or even hours, after the events, without conducting even a tiny investigation, and up until this day the US government is still refusing to provide any sensible arguments to support their version, after they classified all the information that has something to do with the September 11 events.

The absence of any proof of Al-Qaeda involvement in the orchestration of the attacks confirms that the Bush Administration flatly refused to present such proofs to the government of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, which in turn was ready to try Osama Ben Laden according to the Laws of Shari'ah, if the US presented real proofs of their accusations.

All that was mentioned above is testifying that the events of the September 11 were only a pretext to start the American aggression against Afghanistan, which is in turn only a part of the global strategy of the United States.

Along with that, the American attempt to limit the Islamic influence in Central Asia cannot be reduced only to the war with the Taliban and Al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. This aspect of the Central Asian US politics is vividly expressed towards Pakistan, as well as towards former Soviet Republics.

In Pakistan the Americans support the regime of General Musharraf, requiring certain actions from him in return. For the sake of fairness I must mention that they have achieved quite a lot. Under the pressure from the US a number of Madrasas (Muslim schools) were shut down, a number of Islamic organizations which according to the Americans "were connected to terrorists" were banned, and those Pakistani military leaders who once were expressing their sympathies towards the Taliban, were removed from their posts.

At the same time you can't miss the fact that the successes of the US in controlling the situation in Pakistan have pretty relative character. This is because the centralized power in the country, represented by General Musharraf, oftentimes does not even control the situation at the local levels. From here you can see that the further strengthening of the American pressure on the current Pakistani government is obvious, since Pakistani government allows the US troops to "fight terrorism" on its territories. In the nearest future you can expect the Americans to conduct military operations in some individual provinces of Pakistan.

As far as the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia go, here Islam is being opposed by supporting the totalitarian regimes of criminal elites of Karimov, Rakhmonov, Akayev and Niyazov, which have been existing here since the Soviet times and which have not changed much ever since then. You can also add the regime of President of Kazakhstan Nazarbayev, who "plays an important role in the fight against international terrorism", as one of the high-ranking US Department of State officials put it.

What do the United States ask from these regimes in exchange for giving them "guarantees of safety" and potential financial help in the future? In brief, this is how you can answer to that question: to fight against Islam.

One must say that the regimes in the former Soviet Republics in Central Asia are following the indicated directions quite accurately. Virtually all the organizations that one way or another were raising the issue of Islamic revival have been strictly banned and declared "terrorist" organizations. Members of such organizations are subjected to unseen persecutions. Thus, for instance there are many thousands of representatives of Islamic movement of Uzbekistan locked up in Karimov's prisons.

Had anything similar been happening in a country that is not a satellite of the US, Western mass media would have set up a howl about mass violations of human rights. In this case, however, it is not happening. Just as it was not happening last fall when the troops of the so-called Northern Alliance were committing mass slaughters of captured Taliban fighters, and when the American air force was conducting target bombings of residential blocks of Kabul, Jelalabad, and Kandahar.

Two conclusions are arising from what was said above:
First, the definition of human rights, according to the Western alliance, has nothing to do with Muslims.
Second, the United States do not intend to stop before anything in their intention to limit the influence of Islam in Central Asia and in the entire world as a whole.

However, you shouldn't think that the current American aggression against Islam, as one of the components of Washington's global strategy, will not go beyond Afghanistan, Pakistan or former Soviet Republics of Central Asia. Now it is already quite obvious that it will not stop here.

So, which countries may become targets of American expansion in the near future?

Most likely, next such targets will be Iraq and Iran, with whom the Americans have long desired to settle the score, and whom President Bush has already called "the axis of evil". After that, Libya most likely will be attacked (Libya was already subjected to the US aggression in 1986), then Somalia and Sudan. Besides everything else, military aggression against Syria is not excluded either, since Syria was repeatedly accused of "supporting terrorism" by American officials.

Quite important part of the US strategy is supporting the aggression of the Zionist entity against Palestinians and giving the Kremlin finances and time to accomplish the war in Caucasus.

The economic aspect of the current global strategy of the US is also of top priority for Washington. It has two components:

The first component consists of establishing control over natural resources of the countries where pro-American regimes have been planted. Thus, this particular component has an important value in the issue of bringing the former Soviet Republics of Central Asia under the US influence.

The meaning of the economic aspect in the upcoming expansion towards Iraq, Iran and Libya is that the mentioned states (especially when they are put together) are serious players on the world oil market. And therefore planting puppet pro-American regimes like in Afghanistan will let the US maintain the oil prices at the level that they need. In the case with Iran, the rich part of the Caspian Shelf full of resources, that belongs to this country, may be also an issue.

The second component of the economic aspect of American global strategy is that military operations in various parts of the world will lead to the demand in the products of the US military-industrial complex, and to the increase of military orders. That, in turn, according to a number of economists, may promote the warm-up in the American economy and make them overcome the current economic decline.

Copyright 2001. "Kavkaz-Center" News Agency
http://www.kavkaz.org/eng/article.php?id=710