Terrorism and Imperialism - The “Blowback”
Phenomenon
This is the seventh in Modern
Communism’s
series on the relationship between terrorism and imperialism.
The CIA first coined the
term “blowback” during the 1980s to describe the potential for groups receiving
direct financial and military aid from the U.S. to turn against American
imperialism.Since the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in the U.S., the term has become more
commonly used, with many published commentaries describing those attacks as
blowback.
Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda
terrorist network, which was responsible for the September 11 terrorist
attacks, was born out of the funding provided by the CIA to mujahadeen fighters
in Afghanistan following the 1979 Soviet
invasion.The first funding for the
mujahadeen was authorized by the Carter administration in 1979, under the
direction of Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski.In a 1998 interview with French journalist
Vincent Javert of Le Nouvel Observateur,
Brzezinski, asked whether he regretted having armed and financed mujahadeen,
replied,"What is more important to
the history of the world... the Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire?
Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold
war?"
The Reagan administration
continued support for the mujahadeen fighters in Afghanistan and increased the military
and financial aid they received directly from the U.S., as well as from its Saudi
allies.During the Reagan years, Afghani
mujahadeen received close to $6 billion in weaponry alone from the U.S. and Saudi Arabia (New York Times, 1998).Other
funds flowed to the mujahadeen for recruitment of fighters from throughout the
Arab world. In his book The New Jackals, while
examining the link between bin-Laden and terrorism, Simon Reeve notes that
bin-Laden rose to prominence during this period organizing recruitment
campaigns in several countries and then flying recruits to CIA-funded and built
training camps in Pakistan and Afghanistan.Recruits received training from ISI [Pakistani intelligence] agents, who
themselves received training at the CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia.Total funding given to the mujahadeen by the U.S. and its allies during the
1980s has been estimated at $60 billion (Steve Coll, Washington Post).
The blowback phenomenon has
also played out in the Middle East.Israel, which has used suicide
bombings carried out by groups such as Hamas and Islamic Jihad as one of the
pretexts for maintaining its illegal and brutal occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip, initially
provided direct and tacit support to these groups.
Hamas, for example, was
formally created in the mid-1980s but originated as a Palestinian offshoot of
an Egyptian group, the Islamic Brotherhood.The group began organizing in the occupied territories in the 1970s,
during a period when the PLO was in turmoil after its expulsion from Jordan.Sheikh Yasin, the Hamas leader assassinated
earlier this year by Israel, emerged as a leader during
this period.Yasin condemned the PLO and
its leadership as “pork eaters and wine drinkers” and called for Palestinians
to abandon the struggle for a secular, independent Palestine and embrace the idea of an
Islamic state.Yasin’s open hostility to
the PLO was viewed favourably by senior Israeli intelligence officials, who
believed that Islamic groups would split the Palestinian population and weaken
their resistance to occupation.The Islamic
Brotherhood was granted charitable status by Israel in 1979, and allowed to
operate freely in the West Bank and Gaza Strip at the same time that the PLO
was an illegal organization, with membership alone used as justification for
arrest.
In an interview with Graham
Usher, a British journalist who has reported on the Middle East for the Economist and the Guardian, the former Israeli military governor of Gaza, General Yitzhak Segev,
said he even provided direct financial support to Islamic groups operating in Gaza.“The Israeli government gives me a budget and
we extend some financial aid to Islamic groups via Mosques and religious
schools, in order to help create a force that can stand up against the leftist
forces that support the PLO,” he said.Other
reporters have noted that Israeli forces turned a blind eye to some of the
violence perpetrated by Islamic groups when it was directed against the PLO or
other secular groups.