Everybody draws its own conclusions on the children massacre that took place in a school in Beslan, Russia. For "neo-conservatives" Russia cannot escape the "clash of civilizations" strategy. For the Western press, President Putin, after having crashed Chechnya, kills his own children. But for the Russians, this hostage situation that has ended in a blood bath for the innocents, is the latest Anglo-saxon low trick to implode the Russian Federation. Just another provocation encouraging Cold War peripheral conflicts.
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Comparison is inevitable. Only few days from the third anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington, the Russian Federation faces its “9/3”, a mega-attack planned to provoke the most horrifying effect not only in the country victim of the attack but around the world as well. Like in the 2001 attacks, it is essential that the dynamics of the so-called “international terrorism” be understood or interpreted as being radical Islamism.
Actually, we are witnessing a wide redesign of global strategy in which control over and domination of the Caucasian region in Central Asia and its fuel reserves play a fundamental role among players in the geopolitical chess game and terrorism rarely acts as an independent factor.
The “Big Game”
In the collective book “Terror against the national state” [1], the objectives of the September 11 attacks were described as follows : The operation has two immediate goals. The first one would be to produce a certain “Pearl Harbor-like effect”, thus paving the way to justify a big scale geopolitical action in the Middle East and Central Asia, where Afghanistan occupies a strategic position.
The basic principle would be to cause a “war of civilizations” [2], following the line defined by the Establishment ideologues and promoted by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Henry Kissinger. With this approach a Western chain reaction against the Muslim world would take place. Actually it would be like re-editing the “Big Game”, implemented by the British Empire in the 19th Century to fight Russia over the control of Central Asia, always having Afghanistan as a priority in strategic terms.
Secondly, the attacks would provide a pretext to establish a “crisis management” regime in the leadership of the Washington Government, where several civil rights restrictions would be imposed and could be widened to become an authentic internal dictatorship accepted by a population in an induced state of panic.
The escalation of terrorist acts in the Russian Federation during the last weeks, that ended with the atrocities in Beslan, in North Ossetia, is in line with Vladimir Putin’s actions not only to establish the control of the Russian State over the country’s strategic resources, but also to reaffirm its influence on the countries of the former USSR, as part of a strategy to place Russia as the pivot of a wide Euro-Asia cooperation axle.
Putin’s offensive against the so-called Russian “oligarchs” embodied in the law suit against Mijail Jodorkowsky, owner of Yukos oil company [3], stands out among his initiatives that have displeased the West.
All this was explained in the Russian Ministry of Defense’s daily, Krasnaya Zvezda, by Mijail Alexandrov, a specialist in the Moscow CIS Institute. According to the analyst, «the situation in North Ossetia must be analyzed within the context of the growing battle over the control of the Transcaucasia between Russia and the Anglo-Saxon powers. The Anglo-Saxons expect to drive Russia out of the Transcaucasia and in order to do so, they need to destabilize the situation in the north of the Caucasus region and in Russia at large.»
Though compelled to act with restraint being a head of state, Putin was aiming in the same direction. During his visits to the hospital in Beslan, in the morning of Saturday 4th, he stressed that «one of the goals of terrorist attacks was to sow discord among different nationalities and make the north part of the Caucasus region explode».
Later on, in a message to the nation he stated: «What happened is an uncommonly cruel and inhumane terrorist crime. It is not a challenge to the President, the Parliament or the Government. It is a challenge against Russia as a whole, against all our people (...). What we are facing now are not individual acts of intimidation with isolated terrorist attacks. What we are facing is a direct invasion of Russia by international terrorism. »
Destabilization Methods
Destabilization of Russia by manipulating political tensions between Islamic populations of the Federation’s republics and those in the countries of the Caucasus Region and Central Asia is standard practice among the hegemonic circles of the London-Washington-Canberra axle since the days of the Jimmy Carter Administration, when, under the inspiration of the National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski and the British expert on Eastern studies Bernard Lewis (author of the well-known «crisis arc»), Anglo-Saxon intelligence services manipulated the events that led to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and to the Jihad between 1979 and 1989.
It should be recalled that Bernard Lewis was trained by Alexander Benningsen, professor at the Sorbonne, who foretold the destruction of the USSR by Chechens, a theory that was taken and modified by Helene Carrere d’Encausse, who imagined a demographic pressure rather than a conflict of this nature.
Let us also recall that Afghanistan was the “training camp” of the muhajeddin networks that were organized, financed and trained by the intelligence services of the United States, Great Britain, Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, from where most of the “Islamic terrorists” with the generic name of Al-Qaeda come from.
The hegemonic project of “neo-conservatives” who make up most of George W. Bush’s administration, and of its British and Australian allies has only updated such plans as can be seen in the manifest of the Project for a New American Century (PNAC,) [4], Rebuilding America’s Defenses : Strategies, Forces and Resources for à New Century. [5].
Brzezinski himself published in 1997 an updating of his ideas in the book “The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives” [6] in which he states that the United States prime interest, as the first true global power, is to “guarantee that no rival power gets to control Euro-Asia”.
Developments in and around Russia makes us believe in a second and more dangerous phase, that of a strategy to neutralize the country as a global actor in the post USSR period, where prospects of a generalized conflict cannot be ruled out, and will largely depend on Putin’s reaction and that of his inner circles, and also, according to The Grand Chessboard, on the understanding of that reality by the other countries.
In a conversation with Reseña Estratégica (Brazil), a Washington expert made the following comments about the recent terrorist attacks in Russia: «It seems to me that one can certainly say that there are external elements involved in the terrorist action in North Ossetia with the following aims :
– Provoke Russia so that it would launch aggressive actions against terrorists, both in diplomatic and military fields, which will weaken its still fragile alliance with Germany and France while favoring a reconciliation with the United States and Israel.
– Pave the way for future terrorist actions against Russia, if Moscow turns down what is at the same time a threat and an offer;
– Restore the “Atlantic” alliance against Russia by manipulating European reaction to Russian actions against terrorism. The general objective is to weaken both Europe and Russia by facing one against the other and reducing their capability to coordinate an effective resistance to British and U.S. operations in the Middle East and elsewhere».
Definitely, Putin has made it crystal clear: The West has a double speech when asking the Kremlin to negotiate with the so-called Ashlan Mashkadov government in exile. Why don’t you meet Osama bin Laden, invite him to Brussels or to the White House to begin talks, ask him what he wants and give it to him, so that he will leave you alone? He has stated without beating about the bush [7].
Certain sectors in Russia also see this as a good opportunity to rebuild their military and strategic capabilities, mobilize the population and weaken the media propaganda offensive against the country. We cannot , of course, ignore the fact that these sectors have supported or at least not hindered terrorist plans. There are certain elements in Russia -particularly those linked to the oligarchs-who can cooperate with external elements in an operation to weaken Russia.
Anglo-Saxon Interference
Let us highlight some aspects:
– Lithuania accepts the Kavkaz Center (or its antenna in England) in its territory, from where Bassaiev’s message vindicating the Beslan slaughter was broadcast. But then, Lithuania itself, through the Dutch Foreign Minister Bernard Bot, in his capacity as President of the European Council, demands an explanation from Russia on the tragic outcome of the attack in Beslan, as if it were Putin and not Bassaiev the responsible for the massacre. Thus, Vilnius plays a double game to destabilize Moscow and disrupt Euro-Russian relations.
– When in 1991 Chamil Basaiev participated with Boris Eltsin in Moscow’s events, he was portrayed as a CIA agent. He received CIA training in Afghanistan.
– The so-called government in exile of the Republic of Chechnya is based in London (where its President Ashlan Mashkadov and spokesman Akhmed Zakayev enjoy political asylum) and in Washington (where its Minister of Foreign Affairs Ilyas Akhmadov also enjoys political asylum).
– Funds for the so-called Chechen government in exile are guaranteed by the American Committee for Peace in Chechnya, co-presided by the system theoretician Zbigniew Brzezinski, and its implementer Alexander Haig Jr. The Committee is based at the CIA Freedom House [8] facility.
– Neo-conservatives led by Daniel Pipes [9] and think tanks like the Foreign Policy Research Institute (FPRI of which Haig is one of the most outstanding figures) [10], have rushed to welcome the Kremlin’s firm stand in the hope of dragging Russia into its war of civilizations logic. They condemned the New York Times for portraying Chechens as rebels and not terrorists. But they got the same results as in Spain after the March 11 events, because Vladimir Putin replied: «There is no link between the Russian policy in Chechnya and the hostage situation in Beslan (...). Some political circles in the West, nostalgic of the Cold War, want to weaken Russia the same way the Romans wanted to weaken Carthage».
– Simultaneously, the leading press, controlled by these same neo-conservatives, continues to blame the Russian power for the developments and to portray Vladimir Putin as a Stalin apprentice or as the new Czar, as it suits them. The intention was crystal clear : force Putin to negotiate with the so-called government in exile in London, i.e., make the Russian Federation explode in return for a “democratic” tag, just like Eltsin accepted to disintegrate the USSR to win the favors of the West and make his family and friends rich.
The two Chechen wars have brought its procession of horror. Anglo-Saxon interference tends to prolong this drama while blaming the Kremlin for it. This criminal policy could bring about reactions of a similar nature by the Russian Federation in the areas of Anglo-Saxon influence and cause a spiral of violence in peripheral scenarios like during the Cold War.
[1] Terror contra el estado nacional
[2] «The War of Civilizations», by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire, December 7, 2004.
[3] «Bush, Khodorkovsky & Associates», Voltaire, November 13, 2003.
[4] The PNAC is an association established by the American Enterprise Institute to draft George W. Bush’s program and request funds for his presidential election campaign. «U.S. Business Institute of the White House», article in French. Voltaire, June 21, 2004.
[5] Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces and Resources for a New Century. Download (PDF : 852 Kb).
[6] The Grand Chessboard: American Primacy and its Geostrategic Imperatives by Zbigniew Brzezinski, Basic Books, 1997. French Version : Le Grand échiquier, l’Amérique et le reste du monde, Bayard publishing house, 1997.
[7] Quoted by the British daily The Guardian, September 7, 2004.
[8] «Freedom House: when liberty is just a slogan», Voltaire, September 7, 2004.
[9] «Daniel Pipes, expert de la haine», article in French, Voltaire, May 5, 2004.
[10] «Le FPRI et Robert Strausz-Hupé », article in French, Voltaire, September 24, 2004.
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