by F. William Engdahl, Economist, Author and Freelance Journalist
Publisher‘s Note: The
assassination of the most respected Sufi religious leader in Dagestan,
Russia’s volatile Caucasus, comes as Salafist jihadists in Libya murder a
US Ambassador who was actually a key player in ousting Gaddafi and
bringing the Salafist Muslim Brotherhood and Jihadists into power.
Throughout the entire Islamic world today, a wave of hate is being
unleashed in the name of Islamic fundamentalism that could bring a new
world war. This is the consequence of the Greater Middle East Project
put in play in 2010 and earlier by the Washington-London-Tel Aviv axis.Manipulating religious fervor is an explosive cocktail as F. William Engdahl shows here.
The anti-islam movie was just a little propaganda tool. I can clearly see that the recent events the last few weeks were carefully orchestrated running up to this explosive week. The ‘Arab Fall’ purpose is the same as Arabspring, just a little different at the same. But a theatrical drama is indeed being played. Consider this report as one of the key puzzle pieces as The Santos Republic builds its case against the Perpetrators. It is extremely important to understand various elements in these staged events. There is a bigger picture here that many are not seeing. Something is happening behind the Elite scene as there are a lot of retribution going on and I am noticing that quite a few of them are connected to what His Royal Highness EA (big brother) and I have worked on or connected to us in some way as we tried to figure out the Arabspring mess and the destabilization of the region. It’s too realistically synchronistic and too close to home. This is why I am keenly observing, and the more I do so, the red thread connecting them all is becoming glaringly obvious. The sinister airplane and satellite-drone-looking object circling quietly above my property between 22.00-03.00 everyday this week is affirming my suspicions since this began.
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September 15, 2012 (TSR) – On August 28 Sheikh Said Afandi,
acknowledged spiritual leader of the Autonomous Russian Republic of
Dagestan, was assassinated. A jihadist female suicide bomber managed to
enter his house and detonate an explosive device.
The murder target had been carefully selected. Sheikh Afandi, a
seventy-five-year old Sufi Muslim leader, had played the critical role
in attempting to bring about reconciliation in Dagestan between jihadist
Salafi Sunni Muslims and other factions,
many of whom in Dagestan see themselves as followers of Sufi. With no
replacement of his moral stature and respect visible, authorities fear
possible outbreak of religious war in the tiny Russian autonomous
republic. [1]The police reported that the assassin was an ethnic Russian woman who had converted to Islam and was linked to an Islamic fundamentalist or Salafist insurgency against Russia and regional governments loyal to Moscow in the autonomous republics and across the volatile Muslim-populated North Caucasus region.
Ethnic Muslim populations in this region of Russia and of the former Soviet Union, including Uzbekistan, Kyrgystan and into China’s Xinjiang Province, have been the target of various US and NATO intelligence operations since the Cold War era ended in 1990. Washington sees manipulation of Muslim groups as the vehicle to bring uncontrollable chaos to Russia and Central Asia. It’s being carried out by some of the same organizations engaged in creating chaos and destruction inside Syria against the government of Bashar Al-Assad. In a real sense, as Russian security services clearly understand, if they don’t succeed in stopping the Jihadists insurgency in Syria, it will come home to them via the Caucasus.
The latest Salafist murders of Sufi and other moderate Muslim leaders in the Caucasus are apparently part of what is becoming ever clearer as perhaps the most dangerous US intelligence operation ever—playing globally with Muslim fundamentalism.
Previously US and allied intelligence services had played fast and loose with religious organizations or beliefs in one or another country. What makes the present situation particularly dangerous—notably since the decision in Washington to unleash the misnamed Arab Spring upheavals that began in Tunisia late 2010, spreading like a brushfire across the entire Islamic world from Afghanistan across Central Asia to Morocco—is the incalculable wave upon wave of killing, hatreds, destruction of entire cultures that Washington has unleashed in the name of that elusive dream named “democracy.” They do this using alleged Al-Qaeda groups, Saudi Salafists or Wahhabites, or using disciples of Turkey’s Fethullah Gülen Movement to ignite fires of religious hatred within Islam and against other faiths that could take decades to extinguish. It could easily spill over into a new World War.
Syrian Jihadists Affiliated with Al Qaeda & Muslim Brotherhood
Fundamentalism comes to Caucasus
Following the dissolution of the USSR, radical Afghanistani Mujahadeen, Islamists from Saudi Arabia, from Turkey, Pakistan and other Islamic countries flooded into the Muslim regions of the former USSR. One of the best-organized of these was the Gülen Movement of Fethullah Gülen, leader of a global network of Islamic schools and reported to be the major policy influence on Turkey’s Erdogan AKP party.
Gülen was quick to establish The International Dahgestani-Turkish College in Dagestan.
During the chaotic days after the Soviet collapse, the Ministry of Justice of the Russian Federation officially registered and permitted unfettered activity for a variety of Islamic foundations and organizations. These included the League of the Islamic World, the World Muslim Youth Assembly, the reportedly Al-Qaeda friendly Saudi foundation ‘Ibrahim ben Abd al-Aziz al-Ibrahim.’ The blacklist also included Al-Haramein a Saudi foundation reported tied to Al-Qaeda, and IHH, [2] a Turkish organization banned in Germany, that allegedly raised funds for jihadi fighters in Bosnia, Chechnya, and Afghanistan, and was charged by French intelligence of ties to Al Qaeda. [3] Many of these charities were covers for fundamentalist Salafists with their own special agenda.
As many of the foreign Islamists in Chechnya and Dagestan were found involved in fomenting the regional unrest and civil war, Russian authorities withdrew permission of most to run schools and institutions. Throughout the North Caucasus at the time of the Chechyn war in the late 1990’s, there were more than two dozen Islamic institutes, some 200 madrassas and numerous maktabas (Koranic study schools) present at almost all mosques.
The International Dagestani-Turkish College was one that was forced to close its doors in Dagestan. The College was run by the Fethullah Gülen organization. [4]
At the point of the Russian crackdown on the spread of Salafist teaching inside Russia at the end of the 1990’s, there was an exodus of hundreds of young Dagestani and Chechyn Muslim students to Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other places in the Middle East, reportedly to receive training with the Gülen movement and various Saudi-financed organizations, including Salafists. [5] It is believed in Russia that the students trained by Gülen supporters or Saudi and other Salafist fundamentalist centers then were sent back to Dagestan and the North Caucasus to spread their radical strain of Islam.
By 2005 the situation in the Caucasus was so influenced by this Salafist intervention that the Chechen Salafist, Doku Umarov, cited by the UN Security Council for links to Al-Qaeda, [6] unilaterally declared creation of what he called the Caucasus Emirate, announcing he planned to establish an Islamic state under Sharia law encompassing the entire North Caucasus region including Dagestan. He modestly proclaimed himself Emir of the Caucasus Emirate. [7]
Salafism at war with Sufi tradition
Salafism, known in Saudi Arabia as Wahhabism, is a fundamentalist strain of Islam which drew world attention and became notorious in March 2001 just weeks before the attacks of September 11. That was when the Salafist Taliban government in Afghanistan willfully dynamited and destroyed the historic gigantic Buddhas of Bamiyan on the ancient Silk Road, religious statues dating from the 6th Century. The Taliban Salafist leaders also banned as “un-islamic” all forms of imagery, music and sports, including television, in accordance with what they considered a strict interpretation of Sharia.
Afghani sources reported that the order to destroy the Buddhas was made by Saudi-born jihadist Wahhabite, Osama bin Laden, who ultimately convinced Mullah Omar, Taliban supreme leader at the time to execute the act. [8]
The taller of the two Buddhas in 1963 and in 2008 after destruction by the Salafist Taliban
While Sufis incorporate the worship of saints and theatrical ceremonial prayers into their practice, Salafis condemn as idolatry any non-traditional forms of worship. They also call for the establishment of Islamic political rule and strict Sharia law. Sufism is home to the great spiritual and musical heritage of Islam, said by Islamic scholars to be the inner, mystical, or psycho-spiritual dimension of Islam, going back centuries.
Read more>> CIA + Salafism Formula: America’s Covert Plan to Fully Destabilize the Middle East and Russia
