A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm

The Institute for Advanced Strategic Studies' "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000"

Following is a report prepared by The Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies’ "Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000." The main substantive ideas in this paper emerge from a discussion in which prominent opinion makers, including Richard Perle, James Colbert, Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Douglas Feith, Robert Loewenberg, David Wurmser, and Meyrav Wurmser participated. The report, entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”, is the framework for a series of follow-up reports on strategy.

The report should have been entitled "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the [Israeli] Realm” instead. Though it was just an idea, a recommendation, written by a group of passionately pro-Israel Americans led by Richard Perle  for the Likudian Benjamin Netinyahu in light of his candidacy to the Prime Ministry of of the so called state of Israel in 1996, the plan has been wonderfully progressing as planned since then. From the 1996 bloody attacks on Gaza and on Lebanon, to the invasion of Afghanistan in 2001, to the invasion of Iraq in 2003, reaching the successive -excessively bloody- uprooting of US-backed arab dictators...all in the aim of instilling the New Middle East Plan.
Read the following and see, for yourself, how the plan is incredibly relevant to our current day's events! 

A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm

Israel has a large problem. Labor Zionism, which for 70 years has dominated the Zionist movement, has generated a stalled and shackled economy. Efforts to salvage Israel’s socialist institutions—which include pursuing supranational over national sovereignty and pursuing a peace process that embraces the slogan, "New Middle East"—undermine the legitimacy of the nation and lead Israel into strategic paralysis and the previous government’s "peace process". That peace process obscured the evidence of eroding national critical mass— including a palpable sense of national exhaustion—and forfeited strategic initiative.

The loss of national critical mass was illustrated best by Israel’s efforts to draw in the United States to sell unpopular policies domestically, to agree to negotiate sovereignty over its capital, and to respond with resignation to a spate of terror so intense and tragic that it deterred Israelis from engaging in normal daily functions, such as commuting to work in buses.

Benjamin Netanyahu’s government comes in with a new set of ideas. While there are those who will counsel continuity, Israel has the opportunity to make a clean break; it can forge a peace process and strategy based on an entirely new intellectual foundation, one that restores strategic initiative and provides the nation the room to engage every possible energy on rebuilding Zionism, the starting point of which must be economic reform. To secure the nation’s streets and borders in the immediate future, Israel can:

Work closely with Turkey and Jordan to contain, destabilize, and roll-back some of its most dangerous threats. This implies clean break from the slogan, "comprehensive peace" to a traditional concept of strategy based on balance of power.

Change the nature of its relations with the Palestinians, including upholding the right of hot pursuit for self defense into all Palestinian areas and nurturing alternatives to Arafat’s exclusive grip on Palestinian society.

Forge a new basis for relations with the United States—stressing self-reliance, maturity, strategic cooperation on areas of mutual concern, and furthering values inherent to the West. This can only be done if Israel takes serious steps to terminate aid, which prevents economic reform.

This report is written with key passages of a possible speech marked TEXT, that highlight the clean break which the new government has an opportunity to make. The body of the report is the commentary explaining the purpose and laying out the strategic context of the passages.

A New Approach to Peace

Early adoption of a bold, new perspective on peace and security is imperative for the new prime minister. While the previous government, and many abroad, may emphasize "land for peace"— which placed Israel in the position of cultural, economic, political, diplomatic, and military retreat — the new government can promote Western values and traditions. Such an approach, which will be well received in the United States, includes "peace for peace", "peace through strength" and self reliance: the balance of power.

A new strategy to seize the initiative can be introduced:

TEXT:

We have for four years pursued peace based on a New Middle East. We in Israel cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent. Peace depends on the character and behavior of our foes. We live in a dangerous neighborhood, with fragile states and bitter rivalries. Displaying moral ambivalence between the effort to build a Jewish state and the desire to annihilate it by trading "land for peace" will not secure "peace now". Our claim to the land —to which we have clung for hope for 2000 years--is legitimate and noble. It is not within our own power, no matter how much we concede, to make peace unilaterally. Only the unconditional acceptance by Arabs of our rights, especially in their territorial dimension, "peace for peace", is a solid basis for the future.

Israel’s quest for peace emerges from, and does not replace, the pursuit of its ideals. The Jewish people’s hunger for human rights — burned into their identity by a 2000-year old dream to live free in their own land — informs the concept of peace and reflects continuity of values with Western and Jewish tradition. Israel can now embrace negotiations, but as means, not ends, to pursue those ideals and demonstrate national steadfastness. It can challenge police states; enforce compliance of agreements; and insist on minimal standards of accountability.

Securing the Northern Border

Syria challenges Israel on Lebanese soil. An effective approach, and one with which American can sympathize, would be if Israel seized the strategic initiative along its northern borders by engaging Hizballah, Syria, and Iran, as the principal agents of aggression in Lebanon, including by:

·       Striking Syria’s drug-money and counterfeiting infrastructure in Lebanon, all of which focuses on Razi Qanan.

·       Paralleling Syria’s behavior by establishing the precedent that Syrian territory is not immune to attacks emanating from Lebanon by Israeli proxy forces.

·       Striking Syrian military targets in Lebanon, and should that prove insufficient, striking at select targets in Syria proper.

Israel also can take this opportunity to remind the world of the nature of the Syrian regime. Syria repeatedly breaks its word. It violated numerous agreements with the Turks, and has betrayed the United States by continuing to occupy Lebanon in violation of the Taef agreement in 1989. Instead, Syria staged a sham election, installed a quisling regime, and forced Lebanon to sign a "Brotherhood Agreement" in 1991, that terminated Lebanese sovereignty. And Syria has begun colonizing Lebanon with hundreds of thousands of Syrians, while killing tens of thousands of its own citizens at a time, as it did in only three days in 1983 in Hama.

Under Syrian tutelage, the Lebanese drug trade, for which local Syrian military officers receive protection payments, flourishes. Syria’s regime supports the terrorist groups operationally and financially in Lebanon and on its soil. Indeed, the Syrian-controlled Bekaa Valley in Lebanon has become for terror what the Silicon Valley has become for computers. The Bekaa Valley has become one of the main distribution sources, if not production points, of the "supernote" — counterfeit US currency so well done that it is impossible to detect.

Text:

Negotiations with repressive regimes like Syria’s require cautious realism. One cannot sensibly assume the other side’s good faith. It is dangerous for Israel to deal naively with a regime murderous of its own people, openly aggressive toward its neighbors, criminally involved with international drug traffickers and counterfeiters, and supportive of the most deadly terrorist organizations.

Given the nature of the regime in Damascus, it is both natural and moral that Israel abandon the slogan "comprehensive peace" and move to contain Syria, drawing attention to its weapons of mass destruction program, and rejecting "land for peace" deals on the Golan Heights.

Moving to a Traditional Balance of Power Strategy

TEXT:

We must distinguish soberly and clearly friend from foe. We must make sure that our friends across the Middle East never doubt the solidity or value of our friendship.

Israel can shape its strategic environment, in cooperation with Turkey and Jordan, by weakening, containing, and even rolling back Syria. This effort can focus on removing Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq — an important Israeli strategic objective in its own right — as a means of foiling Syria’s regional ambitions. Jordan has challenged Syria's regional ambitions recently by suggesting the restoration of the Hashemites in Iraq. This has triggered a Jordanian-Syrian rivalry to which Asad has responded by stepping up efforts to destabilize the Hashemite Kingdom, including using infiltrations. Syria recently signaled that it and Iran might prefer a weak, but barely surviving Saddam, if only to undermine and humiliate Jordan in its efforts to remove Saddam.

But Syria enters this conflict with potential weaknesses: Damascus is too preoccupied with dealing with the threatened new regional equation to permit distractions of the Lebanese flank. And Damascus fears that the 'natural axis' with Israel on one side, central Iraq and Turkey on the other, and Jordan, in the center would squeeze and detach Syria from the Saudi Peninsula. For Syria, this could be the prelude to a redrawing of the map of the Middle East which would threaten Syria's territorial integrity.

Since Iraq's future could affect the strategic balance in the Middle East profoundly, it would be understandable that Israel has an interest in supporting the Hashemites in their efforts to redefine Iraq, including such measures as: visiting Jordan as the first official state visit, even before a visit to the United States, of the new Netanyahu government; supporting King Hussein by providing him with some tangible security measures to protect his regime against Syrian subversion; encouraging — through influence in the U.S. business community — investment in Jordan to structurally shift Jordan’s economy away from dependence on Iraq; and diverting Syria’s attention by using Lebanese opposition elements to destabilize Syrian control of Lebanon.

Most important, it is understandable that Israel has an interest supporting diplomatically, militarily and operationally Turkey’s and Jordan’s actions against Syria, such as securing tribal alliances with Arab tribes that cross into Syrian territory and are hostile to the Syrian ruling elite.

King Hussein may have ideas for Israel in bringing its Lebanon problem under control. The predominantly Shia population of southern Lebanon has been tied for centuries to the Shia leadership in Najf, Iraq rather than Iran. Were the Hashemites to control Iraq, they could use their influence over Najf to help Israel wean the south Lebanese Shia away from Hizballah, Iran, and Syria. Shia retain strong ties to the Hashemites: the Shia venerate foremost the Prophet’s family, the direct descendants of which — and in whose veins the blood of the Prophet flows — is King Hussein.

Changing the Nature of Relations with the Palestinians

Israel has a chance to forge a new relationship between itself and the Palestinians. First and foremost, Israel’s efforts to secure its streets may require hot pursuit into Palestinian-controlled areas, a justifiable practice with which Americans can sympathize.

A key element of peace is compliance with agreements already signed. Therefore, Israel has the right to insist on compliance, including closing Orient House and disbanding Jibril Rujoub’s operatives in Jerusalem. Moreover, Israel and the United States can establish a Joint Compliance Monitoring Committee to study periodically whether the PLO meets minimum standards of compliance, authority and responsibility, human rights, and judicial and fiduciary accountability.

TEXT:

We believe that the Palestinian Authority must be held to the same minimal standards of accountability as other recipients of U.S. foreign aid. A firm peace cannot tolerate repression and injustice. A regime that cannot fulfill the most rudimentary obligations to its own people cannot be counted upon to fulfill its obligations to its neighbors.

Israel has no obligations under the Oslo agreements if the PLO does not fulfill its obligations. If the PLO cannot comply with these minimal standards, then it can be neither a hope for the future nor a proper interlocutor for present. To prepare for this, Israel may want to cultivate alternatives to Arafat’s base of power. Jordan has ideas on this.

To emphasize the point that Israel regards the actions of the PLO problematic, but not the Arab people, Israel might want to consider making a special effort to reward friends and advance human rights among Arabs. Many Arabs are willing to work with Israel; identifying and helping them are important. Israel may also find that many of her neighbors, such as Jordan, have problems with Arafat and may want to cooperate. Israel may also want to better integrate its own Arabs.

Forging A New U.S.-Israeli Relationship

In recent years, Israel invited active U.S. intervention in Israel’s domestic and foreign policy for two reasons: to overcome domestic opposition to "land for peace" concessions the Israeli public could not digest, and to lure Arabs — through money, forgiveness of past sins, and access to U.S. weapons — to negotiate. This strategy, which required funneling American money to repressive and aggressive regimes, was risky, expensive, and very costly for both the U.S. and Israel, and placed the United States in roles is should neither have nor want.

Israel can make a clean break from the past and establish a new vision for the U.S.-Israeli partnership based on self-reliance, maturity and mutuality — not one focused narrowly on territorial disputes. Israel’s new strategy — based on a shared philosophy of peace through strength — reflects continuity with Western values by stressing that Israel is self-reliant, does not need U.S. troops in any capacity to defend it, including on the Golan Heights, and can manage its own affairs. Such self-reliance will grant Israel greater freedom of action and remove a significant lever of pressure used against it in the past.

To reinforce this point, the Prime Minister can use his forthcoming visit to announce that Israel is now mature enough to cut itself free immediately from at least U.S. economic aid and loan guarantees at least, which prevent economic reform. [Military aid is separated for the moment until adequate arrangements can be made to ensure that Israel will not encounter supply problems in the means to defend itself]. As outlined in another Institute report, Israel can become self-reliant only by, in a bold stroke rather than in increments, liberalizing its economy, cutting taxes, relegislating a free-processing zone, and selling-off public lands and enterprises — moves which will electrify and find support from a broad bipartisan spectrum of key pro-Israeli Congressional leaders, including Speaker of the House, Newt Gingrich.

Israel can under these conditions better cooperate with the U.S. to counter real threats to the region and the West’s security. Mr. Netanyahu can highlight his desire to cooperate more closely with the United States on anti-missile defense in order to remove the threat of blackmail which even a weak and distant army can pose to either state. Not only would such cooperation on missile defense counter a tangible physical threat to Israel’s survival, but it would broaden Israel’s base of support among many in the United States Congress who may know little about Israel, but care very much about missile defense. Such broad support could be helpful in the effort to move the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

To anticipate U.S. reactions and plan ways to manage and constrain those reactions, Prime Minister Netanyahu can formulate the policies and stress themes he favors in language familiar to the Americans by tapping into themes of American administrations during the Cold War which apply well to Israel. If Israel wants to test certain propositions that require a benign American reaction, then the best time to do so is before November, 1996.

Conclusions: Transcending the Arab-Israeli Conflict

TEXT: Israel will not only contain its foes; it will transcend them.

Notable Arab intellectuals have written extensively on their perception of Israel’s floundering and loss of national identity. This perception has invited attack, blocked Israel from achieving true peace, and offered hope for those who would destroy Israel. The previous strategy, therefore, was leading the Middle East toward another Arab-Israeli war. Israel’s new agenda can signal a clean break by abandoning a policy which assumed exhaustion and allowed strategic retreat by reestablishing the principle of preemption, rather than retaliation alone and by ceasing to absorb blows to the nation without response.

Israel’s new strategic agenda can shape the regional environment in ways that grant Israel the room to refocus its energies back to where they are most needed: to rejuvenate its national idea, which can only come through replacing Israel’s socialist foundations with a more sound footing; and to overcome its "exhaustion", which threatens the survival of the nation.

Ultimately, Israel can do more than simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict though war. No amount of weapons or victories will grant Israel the peace its seeks. When Israel is on a sound economic footing, and is free, powerful, and healthy internally, it will no longer simply manage the Arab-Israeli conflict; it will transcend it. As a senior Iraqi opposition leader said recently: "Israel must rejuvenate and revitalize its moral and intellectual leadership. It is an important — if not the most important--element in the history of the Middle East". Israel — proud, wealthy, solid, and strong — would be the basis of a truly new and peaceful Middle East.

Participants in the Study Group on "A New Israeli Strategy Toward 2000:

Richard Perle, American Enterprise Institute, Study Group Leader

James Colbert, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs

Charles Fairbanks, Jr., Johns Hopkins University/SAIS

Douglas Feith, Feith and Zell Associates

Robert Loewenberg, President, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies

Jonathan Torop, The Washington Institute for Near East Policy

David Wurmser, Institute for Advanced Strategic and Political Studies

Meyrav Wurmser, Johns Hopkins University

Is the Bernard Lewis Plan On the Move in Central Asia?

EIRInternational

By Ramtanu Maitra 

By now most of the major media outlets have spelled out with a great deal of inaccuracy what “exactly” happened in the eastern Uzbek town of Andijan on May 13: How many got killed and who killed them. Led by the British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw, the world media has accused the much maligned Uzbekistan President Islam Karimov of yet another bloody and ruthless suppression of “public dissent.” But, not much has been heard about who the players really are, and what their end objective is.

Although all the tiles of this jigsaw puzzle have not been put in place, it is evident that the answers to these questions can only be found in London, Birmingham, Bradford, and Liverpool. The old British colonial establishment, with the former intelligence officer Bernard Lewis as its mentor, seems to have activated another course of action that can bring endless bloodshed in Central Asia. The objective is to keep both China and Russia under an open threat, and no one could better serve this “Bernard Lewis Doctrine” than the Muslims controlled and nurtured in Britain—the Hizb ut-Tahrir.

Our story here concentrates on the geopolitical origins of the destabilization of the Central Asian republic of Uzbekistan, but it is crucial to note that Uzbekistan is only a small slice of the process which Lyndon LaRouche identified in the Fall of 1999 as the “Storm Over Asia”. In a lengthy video documentary at that time, LaRouche described the strategy being deployed in regions stretching from the Caucasus to the Subcontinent, to the Far East, as a deliberate attempt by British-American forces to destroy Russia and China, in particular, as foci for an emerging Eurasian bloc for economic development.

First, the Significance: The most significant aspect of the violent incident in Andijan is that it was located in the Fergana Valley, a confluence of three former Soviet Republics—Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. Andijan is located about 25 miles west of Osh, Kyrgyzstan, where the seed crystal for the March uprising against Kyrgyz President Askar Akayev was planted. Within was gone.

Andijan is also about 25 miles east of Namangan, the hotbed of the Saudi-funded Wahabi-form of Islamic extremism. Juma Namangani, now dead, was the leader of the movement that began in Namangan. In other words, Andijan is in the heart of the Fergana Valley, whose 7 million inhabitants make it the most densely populated region of Central Asia.

For years, the Uzbek government has pointed out that the valley is a hotbed of Muslim extremists aiming to set up an Islamic state in the region. The valley is largely ethnically Uzbek, but is split up between Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, and Kyrgyzstan in a confused patchwork of Soviet-era borders, which leave enclaves of one country surrounded by the territory of another. In general, Uzbekistan holds the valley floor, Tajikistan holds its narrow mouth, and Kyrgyzstan holds the high ground around. Although the valley mouth is narrow, the valley land mass is vast, at 22,000 square kilomters (8,500 square miles). The Pamir and Tien Shan mountains that rise above the valley are only dimly visible, but supply the valley with water.

During the Soviet era, the valley was a major center of cotton and silk production. The hills above are covered by walnut forests, and there is also some oil and gas in the valley. That scene has not changed much. What has changed significantly since the 1990s, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is the valley’s integration with the “free world,” a process that has turned Central Asia into a hot bed of transnational Islamic militants, controlled and funded by outside forces. On the ground, the new foot soldiers of colonial Britain and feudal Arabia are keen to replace the secular regimes in order to set up an Islamic Caliphate.

Recently, the Kyrgyz media reported that the country’s border control services said that militants coming from Afghanistan, financed by arms and drugs trafficking, were gathering near the Kyrgyz borders, and that the illegal entry into Kyrgyzstan of foreign nationals and individuals without any citizenship, is on the rise. It is important to note that these militants were not parachuted out of airplanes, but were coming through Afghanistan and Pakistan. It could very well be a ticking time bomb for India, China, and Russia.

The Foot Soldiers of the U.S. Neo-Cons: In the Fergana Valley, in addition to various Islamic preachers, there are two major Islamic groups whose common objective is to change the regimes in Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Kazakstan. These are the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) and the Hizb ut-Tahrir (HT). While the IMU thrives on violence, the HT is strongly promoted as peaceful by the United Kingdom, where it is headquartered. But records indicate that the IMU and the HT work hand-in-hand. Most of the IMU recruits are from the HT, and according to Rohan Gunaratana, an expert on world terrorist outfits, Khaled Sheikh Muhammad, the alleged mastermind of 9/11, and Abu Musaab al-Zarqawi, the Jordanian of Chechen origin who has remained active in the Iraqi insurgency against the U.S. occupying forces, were both once members of the HT.

The IMU consists of hardcore, well-trained militants ofvarious ethnic origins—Uzbeks, Tajiks, Kyrgyz, Kazaks, Uighurs, and Chechens, among others. These militants identify as their ancestors those who had participated in the Basmachi rebellion against the Soviet Union during the 1918-23 period, fighting along with the White Russians and the British Army. Many of the IMU members, who settled later in Afghanistan, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Turkey, among other places, fought against the Russian invaders in the 1980s in Afghanistan, and were put under the wings of the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).

Reports indicate that there are at least 2,000 of these militants, who have been protected by the Pakistani ISI, with the nod of approval by the Americans and the British. One possible reason that they were protected is that the IMU is single-mindedly seeking revenge against the Russians and those Central Asian leaders who support Russia.

The relationship between the Taliban and IMU is as old as the IMU, going back a long way, before the attacks of 9/11 that prompted the U.S.-led campaign against the Taliban. After the Taliban had captured the Afghan capital, Kabul, in September 1996, Juma Namangani and Tahir Yuldashev—long-time adversaries of Uzbek President Karimov, and considered to be the founders of the IMU—held a press conference in the city to announce the IMU’s formation. Namangani,  who  had  served  as  a  Soviet  paratrooper  in Afghanistan in the 1980s, became the group’s leader (or Ameer), and Yuldashev became its military commander. Their aim was to topple Karimov and turn Uzbekistan, and ultimately the whole of Central Asia, into an Islamic state.

The Taliban provided them with a place to shelter and train—and to plot against Karimov. It is also said that Yuldashev developed contact with Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, and that they became mutually supportive.

After the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in the winter of 2001, Namangani was one of those killed. But Yuldashev led a large number of Central Asian families over the border into South Waziristan, a tribal area in Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province, where the central authorities of Pakistan wield little power. Available information suggests that a large number of these IMU fighters, along with some al-Qaeda and Taliban militia, have moved up to Badakhshan province in eastern Afghanistan. A few, however, are still based in the Waziristan tribal areas of Pakistan. In March 2004, during heavy fighting in the Waziristan area, Yuldashev was reportedly wounded. The Pakistani Army intercepted radio transmissions in both Uzbek and Chechen, according to the Pakistani commander of the counter-insurgency operation, Lieutenant General Safdar Hussain.

Omar Bakri Mohammed

British Intelligence’s Foot Soldiers: Although President Karimov is a target of the IMU, in recent months he has identified the Hizb ut-Tahrir as a greater threat. After the Andijan incident, Uzbek authorities again blamed the HT.

Unlike the IMU, which has concentrated its role in Central Asia with a focus on the Fergana Valley, the Hizb ut-Tahrir is an international Islamic movement. It is headquartered in London, but also has a strong organizational presence in Birmingham, Liverpool, and  Bradford. The group  was co-founded by Omar Bakri Mohammed, who came to the U.K. after being expelled from Saudi Arabia in 1986. HT’s present leader is a communications IT professional from the Indian subcontinent, Jalaluddin Patel.

Hizb ut-Tahrir was established in 1953 in Palestine by a well-known religious figure, the judge of the appellate Shar’ia court in Jerusalem, Takieddin al-Nabahani al-Falastini (1909-1979). According to available reports, the group’s first U.K.- based website was hosted by the London Imperial College, but after complaints to the College authorities, the site was closed down temporarily until a new host could be found. The group now posts in their own name as Hizb ut-Tahrir, and as Khilafah.

Although portrayed as “non-violent” by the British authorities, Bakri’s links to Osama bin Laden are widely known. Excerpts of a letter to Bakri by bin Laden, sent by fax from Afghanistan in the summer of 1998, were published in the Los Angeles Times. Bakri later released what he called bin Laden’s four specific objectives for a jihad against the United States: “Bring down their airliners. Prevent the safe passage of their ships. Occupy their embassies. Force the closure of their companies and banks.”

Many of those who follow the HT activities are intrigued as to why the group is not more discreet. For instance, on its web site in 2003 appeared “A Cry of the Imam from the Muslims of Uzbekistan.” In that article, the “Imam” gave the call “to destroy Karimov”. Similar calls have been issued to oust the Jordanian and Turkish authorities as well.

These are not empty threats. Backed by British Intelli- gence and funds from drugs, as well as from the coffers of Wahabi sheikhs, Hizb ut-Tahrir is a huge organization. Some claim it has at least 10,000 foot soldiers in Central Asia. A few more thousands are lurking in Pakistan and Afghanistan, and HT also has a strong presence in North Africa.

Reports from reliable Indian sources indicate that recent demonstrations against the U.S. and against Karzai were organized by the Hizb ut-Tehrir (HT), and not by the Taliban or the Hizb-e-Islami or the al-Qaeda. Although one source was aware of some HT activities in the student community in Afghanistan, the extent of its penetration not only in the student community, but also in the Afghan security forces came as a surprise. In other words, the American occupying forces will soon be fighting the Britain-run Islamic foot soldiers!

As one Indian analyst pointed out, Osh and Jalalabad, the cities which spearheaded the regime change in Kyrgyzstan, .happen to be HT strongholds. The HT is making huge gains in an entire belt, stretching from the Fergana provinces of Namangan, Andijan, and Kokand (which is contiguous to Osh and Jalalabad) to the adjacent Penjekent Valley (Uzbekistan)  and Khojent (Tajikistan).

Bernard Lewis 

The Bernard Lewis Doctrine: Writing for the Jamestown Foundation, Stephen Ulph, in his article “Londonistan,” seemed intrigued by the fact that scores of violent Islamic movements remain anchored in London. He wrote: 

“It [London] is also a center for Islamist politics. You could say that London has become, for the exponents of radical Islam, the most important city in the Middle East. A framework of lenient asylum laws has allowed the development of the largest and most overt concentration of Islamist political activists since Taliban-ruled Afghanistan. Just ask the French, whose exasperation with the indulgent toleration afforded to Algerian Islamic activists led them to dub the city dismissively as l’ante´chambre de l’Afghanistan. They certainly have a point. Many of bin Laden’s fatwas were actually first publicized in London. In fact, the United Kingdom in general seems to differ from other European states in the degree to which it became a spiritual and communications hub for the jihad movement”.

It is evident that Ulph has no clue of what the long-term British objectives are, and why it is that London remains an “Aladdin’s Cave,” full of Islamic dissidents.

It is to be understood that Britain is no longer a military or economic power of substance. In order to be an almost equal partner of the Atlantic Alliance, Britain has two important ingredients to offer the United States: first, its ability to undo the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, and parts of the Indian subcontinent through the use of creatures living in London’s Aladdin’s cave; and second, its control of world currency movements through the City of London. Unfortunately, these are also poison offerings that have helped to vastly undermine the U.S. credibility.

Zbigniew Brzenski

 The policy of the West towards the Middle East—in other words, the policy of the Anglo-Americans, because the European Union does not have a policy worth citing—has long been formulated by Bernard Lewis. Lewis started his career as an intelligence officer, and for the rest of his life has remained in bed with British Intelligence. Avowedly anti-Russia and pro-Israel, Lewis reaped a rich harvest among U.S - academia and policymakers. He brought under his wing President Carter’s virulent anti-Russia National Security Council chief, Zbigniew Brzezinski, in the 1980s and made the U.S. neo-cons, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, dance to his tune on the Middle East in 2001. In between, Lewis penned dozens of books and was taken seriously by people as a historian.

In fact, Lewis is what he always was—a British Intelligence officer. And like all old Nazis, KKKers, and what have-you, he works for an abysmal cause: revival of the British Empire. To understand Lewis, one must read this statement he made in Canada, while discussing his article, “Freedom and Justice in the Modern Middle East.” He said:

“During the Second World War, Nazi Germany and the Allies had all sorts of odd friends.” Lewis further said: “When Churchill was asked in the House of Commons about Britain’s new ally, Russia, he replied that if Hitler would invade hell, ‘I would find occasion to support the devil.’ In this way, there is nothing odd about an alliance between Saddam and al-Qaeda.”

In essence, what Lewis is saying is that in order to deal a  crippling blow to Russia, and to all powers that would oppose his objective of reviving the Empire, he has no qualms about supporting outfits like the Hizb ut-Tahrir. In 1979, when Ayatollah Khomeini took over power in Iran and the West was in a quandary, Lewis sucked in Brzezinski with his story in Time magazine on “The Crescent of Crisis,” which ended with the following observation: 

“In the long run there may even be targets of opportunity for the West created by ferment within the crescent. Islam is undoubtedly compatible with socialism, but it is inimical to the atheistic Communism. The Soviet Union is already the world’s fifth largest Muslim nation. By the year 2000, the huge Islamic populations in the border republics may outnumber Russia’s now dominant Slavs. From Islamic democracies on Russia’s southern tier, zealous Koranic evangelism might sweep across the border into these politically repressed Soviet states, creating problems for the Kremlin. . . . Whatever the solution, there is a clear need for the U.S. to recapture what Kissinger calls the ‘geopolitical momentum.’ That, more than anything else, will help maintain order in the crescent of crisis.”

It seems the same process has been unleashed once more. This time, the objective is to weaken China, Russia, and possibly, India, using the HT to unleash the dogs of war in Central Asia. It is not difficult for those on the ground to see what Lewis and his foot soldiers are up to. Indeed, the leader of the Islamic Party of Tajikistan, Deputy Prime Minister Hoji Akbar Turajonzoda, has identified the HT as a Western-sponsored bogeyman for “remaking Central Asia.” Turajonzoda said: “A more detailed analysis of HT’s programmatic and ideological views and concrete examples of its activities suggests that it was created by anti-Islamic forces. One proof of this is the comfortable existence this organization enjoys in a number of Western countries, where it has large centers and offices that develop its concept of an “Islamic caliphate”.

It is evident that Turajonzoda has seen through Lewis’s game. However, he has little capability to stop the juggernaut now unleashed.

On the other hand, it is not the lack of understanding on behalf of American neo-cons associated with the Bush Administration, but their keenness to use the Lewis Doctrine to achieve what they believe is justified, that promises an untold danger. How important a brain-trust is Lewis to the neo-cons? Read the following: “Bernard Lewis has been the single most important intellectual influence countering the conventional wisdom on managing the conflict between radical Islam and the West,” says neo-con Richard Perle, who remains a close adviser to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld. “The idea that a big part of the problem is failed societies on the Arab side is very important,” says Perle. “That is not the point of view of the diplomatic establishment.”

Copyright © of Ramtanu Maitra 2005

A New Middle East Project, Larger or the Largest?!

“Peres” wrote a book about it, Americans expounded their vision, 

and “Rice” found it now in a state of gestation.

Dr. Moufid El Sawaf


Conflict for a new or greater “Middle East Project” is over oil, and the objective of Greater Lebanon and Greater Jordan is the settlement of Palestinians.

In accordance with many strategic researches and many links with highly-experienced contacts in the United States of America, the secrets of the American project for a new Middle East were revealed, by which geographic and demographic area of the old Middle East is being reformulated (Sykes-Picot) in line with the interests of the United States of America for ten lean years, and with which the countries of the Middle East, including the Arab states go through disputes, conflicts  and differences which lead at the end to federalism, ethnic and sectarian cantons divided on regional states (Israel) with powerful influence of such mini small, scattered sub-States.

  

-Strategic Research has shown also that (China) and (United States of America) both need 70% (Seventy %) of the Middle East oil after ten to fifteen years from now.

-Consequently, the struggle for a new larger Middle East will extend to reach the western border of China (The Smaller Giant) in their dispute over oil in the project named truly ... (Greater Middle East) to include countries of the Middle East and the Near East, both in the cosmic map of the world.


-The emergence of Iran (as a Major Regional State), influential and challenging to the Greater Middle East Regional Project, thereby hindering and encountering the implementation of this American project, where the United States cannot stand against or even occupy Iran's for many considerations including geography, population and the escalating Iranian military arsenal in addition to the relative failure of American involvement in the Iraqi quagmire. Any military strike against Iran would lead to a sharp reaction and retaliation which would negatively affect the oil industry (production, transport and consumption) from the Caspian Sea to the Red Sea due to the central position of Iran geographically and politically in the Middle East.

-Therefore, for the reasons mentioned hereinabove, America preferred to strike Iran's allies, which led to aggression (sixth war) against Lebanon, with American support and motivation, Israeli means, and fitted with an Arab cover. The goal is to eliminate Hezbollah and curb and isolate Syria and thus besiege Iran later on, and finally to end the Palestinian resistance, followed by the resettlement of Palestinians and the normalization of Arabs. However, the real reason for this aggression is that UN Resolution no. 1559 reached a standstill.The other reason is Iran's refusal to negotiate with the United States in regard with Iraq.

-It is the first precedent in the history of Israel that America asks Israel not to accept the suspension of fire, and urges Israel's continued aggression in spite of the faltering Israeli forces and their failure in achieving the objectives of this American aggression. It is the first in the history of previous Arab-Israeli war, that Israeli air force and ground forces, including armor, fail in wounding Lebanese national resistance or crushing them despite the absence of air cover and armor to these small resistance, small in equipment but strong in faith. It is the first time in the history of Israel that Israeli National Security is threatened in depth, to be attacked by rocket shelling of Hezbollah in most towns, settlements and laboratories as well as marine forces, to be bombed in the Mediterranean shores of Lebanon. Really, the Israeli State has been insulted together with its coward army and people. It is time to the Arab States and peoples, by the study of this guerrilla war, which showed us that Israel and America and those behind them could be crushed and defeated. For the first time, the Arabs may be honored and the legend of Israeli power and behind it America as well as the credibility of the United Nations could fall. The Lebanese resistance proved, in its turn, to be a social, military, political and unique resistance.

-“Condoleezza Rice” has disclosed for the first time about the project of a new Middle East unlike the old one. It is the war of terrorism of both globalization and Americanization, which gave the green light to Israel to launch immoral assault against Lebanon according to the policy of scorched earth, a deliberate and systematic destruction of the land and people under the complicity of the United Nations, and under the shadow of American-Zionist (John Bolton). Unfortunately, the involvement of the United Nations representative (Tidlarsen), which was the godfather of Oslo and the Quartet Treaty, as well as the peace project which was lamented by the Secretary General of the Arab League (Amr Moussa).  We should not ignore or deny the Arab role in the coverage of the Israeli aggression on Lebanon and the contribution of some Arab countries. Rome conference has been convened and failed, and dropped the masks of conspirators and misleaders from the conferees. Unfortunately, we can see the inability of the Arabs in international negotiations, as they yielded to impartial mediator (America), which handed them over to the rival enemy (Israel).


-As regards Iran, it has sent an international warning to run war if aggression is extended horizontally into a war against Syria. In contrast, as per the statement of Minister of Information, Syria threatened to enter the war by all means if Israel sought to fight a wild war to pass from the red geographical line of Lebanese forces, or if it is struck by Israeli air and, finally, whether Israel was able to defeat Hezbollah. which does not seem possible until now, in addition to that it is to prevent the implementation of any international resolution providing for the deployment of NATO forces or multinational forces on the Lebanese territory or its border with Syria.

-All I hope is that Arabs in their international negotiations do not miss, but invest this victory over Israel, and to turn from the concept of surrender to the concept of resistance and then to an advanced notion in the culture of victory?!!! The victory of the resistance is undoubtedly a victory for the Arab and Islamic nation in all of the ongoing Arab-Israeli conflict, a conflict over land, water, oil, which is also a conflict over existence and border altogether.

•To return to the very beginning, I recall what was published in the (Cham Press): a translation by Dr. Ahmed Al-Issa of his article (Limits of blood and the new Middle East) in the Journal of the American Armed Forces and published by the American officer (Ralph Peters). This new American project of the new Middle East, along with the abolition of the current limits in favor of new ethnic and sectarian ones. The project is based upon the partition, segmentation and the placement of some current states which grow for definite objectives and turn into new sub-States.

-“Ralph Peters” considers Middle East Conflicts and the recurrent tension in the region as a result of (logical) major imbalance in the current arbitrary boundaries set by, as he put it (Utilitarian Europeans). Based on the premise that (international border could not be fully fair). But the size of the gross injustice that prevailed determines the difference between what he calls "freedom and oppression, tolerance and atrocity, and the legitimacy of terrorism or war and peace." It is alleged that "unfair borders in the Middle East generate turbulent region more than it can bear." It is true that the Middle East suffers from multiple problems, such as cultural stagnation and social injustice, religious extremism, but the key to understanding the great failures in the region, he says, is not Islam but the border between the states of the region about which any discussion is still prohibited.

-While “Ralph Peters” acknowledges that the ethnic and religious groups in the Middle East practiced mixing coexistence and intermarriage, but we have to redraw the boundaries in order to be fair with the existing ethnic groups. A long list of such groups is mentioned from the perspective of ethnic and religious or sectarian classification. He recognizes that the subject matter addressed herein consists of "Enormous manmade deformations – deformations distortions that will not stop of generating hatred and violence unless corrected". Peters recalled those who do not want to rearrange the border as a kind of "thinking of impossible" reminding "ethnic cleansing" which prevailed since five thousand years for a return to the so-called "blood borders". Peters believes that the continuing war between the Arabs and Israel is not a struggle for existence, but is otherwise on the border and that the region will continue to suffer as long as the borders are in turmoil and infinite trouble.

-For these reasons, and for a new Middle East, Peters submits a new American roadmap which abolishes the existing borders and divides States, shifting the current state to many sub-States, whereby new states emerge, small states grow and large states get smaller. The biggest loser in the new map is Saudi Arabia. As for Iraq, it will be transformed into three sub-states. There is a new situation for Syria and others which will appear later.


-Peters casts blame on the United States and its allies not to invest great opportunity after the fall of Baghdad to divide Iraq into three states for what he calls "end injustice". The division will lead to a Shiite state in the south, Sunni in the center and a Kurdish state (Free Kurdistan) in the north. Here Peters addresses Western countries saying "Free Kurdistan from Diyarbakir to Tabriz will be friendlier to the West from Bulgaria to Japan."

-As for the small Iraqi Sunnis made up of three provinces in the center will only choose subsequently unity with Syria. Syria will lose the entire coastal region in favor of the "Greater Lebanon Mediterranean character leading to the return of the Phoenician". But Iraqi Shiite south will be the nucleus "of the State of the Shiite Arab majority which will extend along the Persian Gulf". Jordan will maintain the current territorial borders plus new areas of Saudi Arabia, i.e. there will be larger Lebanon and larger Jordan. The interpretation here is the absorption and resettlement of the Palestinians in Jordan and Lebanon.

-Peters considers the reason for the stagnation in the Islamic world because of the way in which the Royal Family in Saudi Arabia deals with Mecca and Medina which despises them as a special "feudal property". He says that such holy places should not be left under the control of the police state, as being one of the world's most intolerant and repressive regimes. He adds that "the arrival of the Saudis to wealth and hegemony is the worst thing that happened to the Muslim world all over centuries, since the age of the Prophet and the worst of what happened to the Arab nation since the "Ottoman victory if not Mongolian" (literal translation). It is therefore proposed to develop Mecca and Medina under the authority of a private religious authority like the Vatican (Super Islamic Vatican). It is proposed to incorporate Saudi coastal oil wells of the Shiite state, particularly as these are Shiite areas and incorporate southeast Saudi Arabia, Yemen, and the northern part with Jordan. Thus, the current inventory of Saudis in Riyadh and the surrounding areas can be made. This way, says Ralph Peters "Saudi family would not be able to inflict further harm and evil Islam and the world."

-As for Iran, it will lose, in it turn, large parts of the territory of Azerbaijan and Kurdistan and the Shiite state and Free Baluchistan, but would get the "Heart" of Afghanistan because this region is linked linguistically and historically with Iran. Iran will become an ethnic State once again, but does not take a decision on "Bendrebbas." As for Afghanistan, it will compensate for the loss of Pakistan as it is the return of tribal areas in northwestern Pakistan, Afghan brethren will join the residents of these areas. In order to return non-natural corollary Pakistan to a natural State, it must abandon the Baluch to the emergence of a "Free Baluchistan".

-Kuwait will remain in the new Middle East unchanged. The UAE will include some of the new Shiite state, which will be hostile to Iran and not ally says Peters. Dubai will remain the same club "for the corrupt wealthy people". The author alleges that Babylon fell three times and will remain volatile until the natural boundaries are verified. He concludes his article with the words "Unless there is a correction of the border in the Greater Middle East consistent with these natural borders and bonds of blood and religion, there will be more bloodshed in the region", as if he warns of the bloodiest limits if the American blood boundaries did not succeed.

What is the new Middle East Project?
 Despicably, and with unprecedented arrogance, Condoleezza Rice announced that it had extended another week to «Israel» to continue its brutal war against Lebanon and said: What is happening today is painful for the birth a new Middle East. Thus, the war against the brother Lebanon is an American-Israeli project so as to draw a new map of the region worse than that of Sykes-Picot. Hence, the continuation of aggressive war came from Washington.

•How the new Middle East Project is born? As expressed by Dr. Ghazi Hussein in the Bulletin of integrity: “The term New and Larger Middle East has many political roots behind its usage; it does not stem from the characteristics of the region or its demographic or political nature, but from the vicinity of the area to Europe and European desire to exploit its wealth and fight its people, and the elimination of Arab unity and Arab regime, tearing the Arab homeland into sectarian and ethnic sub-states, and the reinstallation (as is happening in Iraq) and legitimizing the Jewish rape of Palestine and the liquidation of the Arab case of Palestine, the Zionist project established to serve the Zionist entity and American imperialism. Imagine Theodore Hertzel, the founder of the Zionist movement (A Middle Eastern Commonwealth in which Jews have an active state wherein they will have a major economic and leading role and which will be their investments center). The Zionist conference of Baltimore held in 1942, recommended the establishment of a Middle Eastern Commonwealth led by Jews. Jews of Britain and the United States succeeded in instilling «the idea of the Middle East» in the heart of British and American policies during World War II. They set forth a plan for the Judaization of Arab Palestine and the establishment of «Israel» and turning it into a modern industrial base to be the cornerstone of future American projects and schemes in the region.

-«Israel» and the United States planned for a war of aggression in June 1967 and the invasion of Lebanon in 1982 for their military and political targets; the American administration prevented the aggressor «Israel» from the withdrawal in application of the resolutions of international legitimacy. Labor Zionist Party launched the establishment of Israeli-Palestinian-Jordanian union like the Benelux union between Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg. Jewish intellectuals called for feeding sectarianism and fragmenting the major Arab Countries.

-This Zionist planning does not care about the principles of right, justice and international law and international covenants and conventions, the sovereignty and independence of Arab countries and the inviolability of its territory, but depends upon the law of the jungle in igniting preventive and preemptive wars and imposing a “fait accompli” resulting from the use of force and the Jewish settler colonialism and to compel Arab governments to be subservient to the Zionist schemes, while violating their will. The American Jewish orientalist “Bernard Lewis” set forth a blueprint for the Middle East published in the American journal “Foreign Affairs” in the fall of 1992 under the title: «Reconsideration of the Middle East». It draws up a new Middle East geographic boundaries to Islamic republics in Central Asia. He expected the abolition of the role of the Arabs in the new history of the region in favor of other regional forces with «Israel» in the forefront.


The American expert in the region's affairs “Robert Stphalo” expected that some Arab countries may involve «Israel» as a principal player directly and openly in the game of balance-of-powers and differences among themselves by building alliances between them and «Israel», by which such countries become more powerful in their conflicts, traditional and contemporary differences. Stphalo attributes this new phenomenon to two facts: firstly, that «Israel» is the dominant military force in the region, capable of shifting the balance-of-power between an Arab State against another Arab country. And secondly, that a number of Arab countries realized that the key to Washington is often in «Israel», and therefore those States should improve their relations with «Israel» to ensure a good relationship with Washington. The creator of “Dimona Atomic Reactor” the butcher of Qana “Shimon Peres” thought about a new Middle East in November 1992 in a meeting with a group of educated Egyptians in the National Institute for Middle East Studies in Cairo. “Israel” submitted in the book of Peres «a new Middle East System», which appeared in 1993 in Oslo agreements and Wadi Araba and the tires economic summits in Casablanca, Amman, Cairo and Doha, a colonial project  for domination of the region's economies, change of its culture and leaderships, revoking the «Larger Israel» geographical approach and adopting the economically «Greater Israel».

• United States & the Greater Middle East Project
-The United States put at the beginning of March 2004 «the Greater Middle East Project» set by Bernard Lewis and Shimon Peres, and replaced the word of the new scheme put forward by Peres by the word “Greater”. But, Condoleezza Rice returned on July 21, 2006 and used the new word “New” instead of “Larger”.


-The American administration believes that there is a real opportunity after changing the Iraqi regime by force and war on Lebanon to redraw the map of the new Arab and Islamic region, worse than that of Sykes-Picot, while the worldwide Judaism and «Israel» had declared war on Arabs and Muslims.


-The “New” or “Larger” Middle East Project came into existence in accordance with a study by the two Jewish advisers in the Bush administration, Richard Perle and Douglas Fayt under the title:“A new strategy to ensure the security of «Israel»”. The study calls for the abandonment of Oslo agreement due to the inability of the Palestinian Authority and respect for human Jews in the «Jewish state of Greater Israel», linking Israeli and U.S. interests in the region with the overall American strategy.

-The killer “Sharon” alleged that terrorism that struck the United States is the same, which strikes «Israel» for several decades, the Jews of the American administration claimed that the detestation of Arabs towards «Israel» is stemming from religious and historical legacy and that the Arab-Islamic culture and curriculum are responsible for the hatred and incitement to murder Jews and Americans.


• American perceptions of the Greater Middle East Project
-The American project is stemmed from two main pillars: the first pillar says that the substantial deterioration in the Arab situation in the political, economic and social aspects requires the beginning in reform. And second: that these conditions constitute a fertile ground for the emergence of extremism and international terrorism.

-The project calls for the need to initiate change and reform, the necessity to assist international efforts to achieve it, because the United States rejected these conditions and insisted to be change them and to eradicate terrorism (resistance), hatred and incitement against «Israel» as well as American interests, the American initiative identified reform in three goals: democracy, knowledge and women's freedom, and included the means to achieve them.


-The United States is working to integrate the Zionist entity in the Arab region and stabilize it on the expense of land and rights of Palestinians, Arabs as well as Muslim rights, and make it the dominant Center and the region to maintain the indivisibility and underdevelopment, dependence and exploitation. The United States sponsored the Zionist project for the future of the region and integrated it in its cosmic strategy and brings it today into existence to secure control over the oil wells and pathways as well as its assets and liquidate the question of Palestine.

-The project aims to force the Arabs to cancel the boycott and scramble for normalization as well as impose the hegemony of «Israel» on the Arab economies. It is characterized by two main indications: firstly, that it is a curtain to integrate «Israel» in the region and assume the role of leader and center, and secondly: that the driver and motivator of the project is American from outside the region. We may be surprised in hearing the talks of the United States about freedom and democracy, which worked and is working to bury the freedom of people in Palestine, Lebanon, Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and everywhere in the world and which is  the most powerful nation in history that practiced genocide wars and other wars of aggression. It is the only country in the world that used nuclear bombs and weapons and ammunition internationally banned completely-American, weapons and used by internationally banned «Israel» in the wars of aggression against Lebanon and Palestine. The new witness is the massacre at Qana first in 1996 and then the second being Qana massacre in 2006, it is the criminal and racist policy of America and Israel against civilians?!!!

In conclusion, I say that history will remember those who are victory makers and those who are conspirators and submissive Arab rulers. History will write down the barbarism, brutality and criminality of America and the Israeli government. We are in a crisis of regional conflicts and international terrorism, which exceeded the dialogue of civilizations into a conflict between religions in the American project for “A New Middle East”.

Copyright © of Dr. M. Al-Sawaf

Bernard Lewis: British Svengali Behind Clash Of Civilizations

PROFILE:BERNARD LEWIS

By Scott Thompson and Jeffrey Steinberg

This article appears in the November 30, 2001 issue of Executive Intelligence Review.

On Nov. 19, octogenarian British Orientalist spook Bernard Lewis wrote an elaborate apologia for Osama bin Laden, a fervent pitch for the inevitability of the "Clash of Civilizations," in the pages of New Yorker magazine. Under the headline "The Revolt of Islam”, Lewis lied that the emergence of "Islamic terrorism" in the recent decades, is completely consistent with mainstream Islam, which is committed to the subjugation of the infidels to Islamic law. He went through 14 pages of a fractured fairy-tale history of Islam, quoting bin Laden's Oct. 7, 2001 videotape, where the Saudi expatriate spoke of Islam's "humiliation and disgrace ... for more than 80 years"—a reference to the crushing of the Ottoman Empire by Britain and France in 1918. Lewis invented a tradition of jihad, "bequeathed to Muslims by the Prophet":

"In principle," Lewis explained, "the world was divided into two houses: the House of Islam, in which a Muslim government ruled and Muslim law prevailed, and the House of War, the rest of the world, still inhabited and, more important, ruled by infidels. Between the two, there was to be a perpetual state of war until the entire world either embraced Islam or submitted to the rule of the Muslim state."

Among all the different "infidels" ruling the House of War, Lewis asserted, Christianity was singled out as "their primary rival in the struggle for world domination." Lewis cited slogans painted on the walls of Jerusalem's Dome of the Rock from the Seventh Century, assailing Christianity.

Lewis then claimed that the evolution of modern Islamic terrorism, specifically the al-Qaeda terrorism, had a long proud history within Islam, dating to the Assassins cult of the 11th-13th Centuries (Lewis wrote a 1967 book, The Assassins, extolling the virtues of this secret society). He also identified Saudi Arabia and Egypt as two regimes legitimately singled out by the Islamic jihadists, for their corruption by "modernism."

He concluded, ominously: "For Osama bin Laden, 2001 marks the resumption of the war for the religious dominance of the world that began in the Seventh Century.... If bin Laden can persuade the world of Islam to accept his views and his leadership, then a long and bitter struggle lies ahead, and not only for America. Sooner or later, al-Qaeda and related groups will clash with the other neighbors of Islam—Russia, China, India—who may prove less squeamish than the Americans in using their power against Muslims and their sanctities. If bin Laden is correct in his calculations and succeeds in his war, then a dark future awaits the world, especially the part of it that embraces Islam."

Bernard Lewis Plan, Take II

Since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, Lewis has, not surprisingly, resurfaced in numerous locations. After all, the 85-year old British Arab Bureau mandarin has been London's point-man in the United States since 1974, when he was posted to H.G. Wells' outpost at Princeton University's Center for Advanced Studies, to secure American compliance with British geopolitical manipulations in the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Caspian Basin, and Central Asia.

To put it bluntly: British intelligence senior operator Lewis is the guiding hand behind the ongoing U.S. neo-conservative drive for a new "Thirty Years War" in Eurasia. This drive is at the heart of the ongoing coup d'état attempt against the George W. Bush Administration, which began with the Sept. 11 irregular warfare attacks on New York City and Washington.

Lewis' arrival at Princeton, after serving on the faculty of the University of London's Middle East and Africa faculty (the repository of the original India House files, long officially referred to as the Colonial Department), coincided with then-Secretary of State Henry A. Kissinger's fomenting of the civil war in Lebanon. That persists to the present day, and served as a laboratory for the later "Islamic revolution" in Iran.

Lewis is no mere British quackademic. After obtaining his doctorate in the history of Islam from the University of London School of Oriental and African Studies, he joined the university faculty in 1938. From 1940-45, Lewis was, in his own understated words, "otherwise engaged," as a wartime British Military Intelligence officer, later seconded to the British Foreign Office. To this day, Lewis remains mum about his wartime "engagements."

Since arriving at Princeton, Lewis has been demonstrably responsible for every piece of strategic folly and insanity into which the United States has been suckered in Asia Minor. The Wellsian "method to his madness" has been the persistent push to eliminate the nation-state system, and launch murderous wars stretching across the Eurasian region.

* During the Carter Administration, Lewis was the architect of madman Zbigniew Brzezinski's "Arc of Crisis" policy of fomenting Muslim Brotherhood fundamentalist insurrections all along the southern tier of the Soviet Union. The planned fostering of radical Islamist war provocations was known, at the time, as "the Bernard Lewis Plan." Among the fruits of this Lewis-Brzezinski collusion: the February 1979 Ayatollah Khomeini "Islamic Revolution" in Iran, which overthrew the Shah, and sent the once-proud center of the Islamic Renaissance back into a 20-year dark age; and the 1979-1988 Afghanistan War, provoked by Brzezinski's July 1979 launching of covert support for Afghan mujahideen "Contras" inside Afghanistan—six months prior to the Soviet Red Army's Christmas Eve invasion.

As early as 1960, in a book-length study he prepared for the Royal Institute for International Affairs, under the title The Emergence of Modern Turkey, Lewis polemicized against the modernizing, nation-building legacy of Turkey's Mustafa Kemal Ataturk. He argued instead for the revival of an Ottoman Empire that could be used as a British geopolitical battering ram against Russia and against the Arab states of the Persian Gulf—in alliance with Israel.

* It was Bernard Lewis who launched the hoax of the "Clash of Civilizations"—in a September 1990 Atlantic Monthly article on "The Roots of Muslim Rage," which appeared three years before Brzezinski clone Samuel Huntington's publication of his Foreign Affairs diatribe, "The Clash Of Civilizations." Huntington's article, and his subsequent book-length treatment of the same subject, were caricatures of Lewis' more sophisticated British Orientalist historical fraud, which painted Islam as engaged in a 14-century-long war against Christianity. Huntington acknowledged that Lewis' 1990 piece coined the term "Clash of Civilizations."

* In 1992, in the aftermath of the Persian Gulf War, Lewis celebrated in the pages of the New York Council on Foreign Relations' Foreign Affairs that the era of the nation-state in the Middle East had come to an inglorious end, and the entire region should expect to go through a prolonged period of "Lebanonization"—i.e., degeneration into fratricidal, parochialist violence and chaos.

"The eclipse of pan-Arabism," he wrote, "has left Islamic fundamentalism as the most attractive alternative to all those who feel that there has to be something better, truer, and more hopeful than the inept tyrannies of their rulers and the bankrupt ideologies foisted on them from outside." The Islamists represent "a network outside the control of the state.... The more oppressive the regime, the greater the help it gives to fundamentalists by eliminating competing oppositionists."

He concluded the Foreign Affairs piece by forecasting the "Lebanonization" of the entire region, save Israel: "Most of the states of the Middle East ... are of recent and artificial construction and are vulnerable to such a process. If the central power is sufficiently weakened, there is no real civil society to hold the polity together, no real sense of common national identity or overriding allegiance to the nation-state. The state then disintegrates—as happened in Lebanon—into a chaos of squabbling, feuding, fighting sects, tribes, regions and parties."

* In 1998, it was Lewis who catapulted Osama bin Laden into prominence with a November/December Foreign Affairs article, legitimizing the Saudi black sheep as a serious proponent of mainstream, militant Islam. Lewis' piece, "License To Kill: Osama bin Laden's Declaration Of Jihad," showered praise on bin Laden, pronouncing his "Declaration of Jihad Versus Jews and Crusaders" "a magnificent piece of eloquent, at times even poetic Arabic prose ... which reveals a version of history that most Westerners will find unfamiliar."

Caught In The Act

Osama bin Laden released his 1998 jihad call on Feb. 23, 1998, six months before the truck bombing attacks against the U.S. embassies in Tanzania and Kenya. The very next day, Bernard Lewis' signature appeared on a widely circulated Open Letter To President Bill Clinton, released by a previously unheard-of entity called the Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf, demanding that the U.S. government throw its full support behind a military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein. The Open Letter called for carpet bombing Iraq, and for the United States to aggressively give financial and military support for the Iraqi National Congress, yet another corrupt and inept "Contra" pseudo-gang, created by U.S. and British intelligence elements, and based in London.

In addition to Bernard Lewis, the Open Letter was endorsed by former U.S. Rep. Steven Solarz (D-N.Y.), notorious Anglo-Israeli propagandist and spy Richard Perle, convicted Iran-Contra criminal Elliott Abrams, Jonathan Pollard fellow-traveller Steven Bryen, Frank Gaffney, New Republic publisher and Al Gore mentor Martin Peretz, Paul Wolfowitz, Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP) research director David Wurmser, and Dov Zakheim.

Lewis' public alliance at that time with the leading lights of the "Mega" apparatus—now waging all-out war against the Bush Administration's efforts to box in Israeli madman Ariel Sharon—is noteworthy, but not surprising. Lewis is lionized inside Israel, and by the Israeli Lobby in America as a geopolitical giant. On Feb. 19, 1996, Lewis was feted in Jerusalem, where he delivered the ninth annual B'nai B'rith World Center "Jerusalem Address" on "The Middle East Towards the Year 2000." His son, Michael Lewis, is the director of the American-Israeli Public Affairs Committee's super-secret "opposition research section." This is one of the most important wellsprings of propaganda and disinformation, presently saturating the U.S. Congress and American media with war-cries for precisely the Clash of Civilizations Bernard Lewis has been promoting for decades.

 Copyright ©  Scott Thompson and Jeffrey Steinberg 2001