Destroying a nation state

How US-Saudi funded terrorists are sowing chaos in Pakistan

While the United States is close allies with Saudi Arabia and Qatar, it is well established that the chief financier of extremist militant groups for the past three decades, including Al-Qaeda, are in fact Saudi Arabia and Qatar. While Qatari state-owned propaganda like Al-Jazeera apply a veneer of progressive pro-democracy to its narratives, Qatar itself is involved in arming, funding, and even providing direct military support for sectarian extremists from northern Mali, to Libya, to Syria and beyond.

Since Saudi-Qatari geopolitical interests are entwined with Anglo-American interests, both the “investment” and “return on this investment” are clearly part of a joint venture.

In terms of Pakistan’s Lashkar-e-Jhangvi, as well as the infamous Lashkar-e-Taiba that carried out the 2008 Mumbai, India attack killing over 160, both are affiliates of Al-Qaeda, and both have been linked financially, directly to Saudi Arabia. In the Guardian’s article, “WikiLeaks cables portray Saudi Arabia as a cash machine for terrorists,” the US State Department even acknowledges that Saudi Arabia is indeed funding terrorism in Pakistan:

“Saudi Arabia is the world’s largest source of funds for Islamist militant groups such as the Afghan Taliban and Lashkar-e-Taiba – but the Saudi government is reluctant to stem the flow of money,” according to Hillary Clinton.

“More needs to be done since Saudi Arabia remains a critical financial support base for Al-Qaida, the Taliban, LeT and other terrorist groups,” says a secret December 2009 paper signed by the US secretary of state. Her memo urged US diplomats to redouble their efforts to stop Gulf money reaching extremists in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“Donors in Saudi Arabia constitute the most significant source of funding to Sunni terrorist groups worldwide,” she said. Three other Arab countries are listed as sources of militant money: Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates.

Lashkar-e-Jhangvi has also been financially linked to the Persian Gulf monarchies. Stanford University’s “Mapping Militant Organisations: Lashkar-e-Jhangvi,” states under “External Influences:”

“LeJ has received money from several Persian Gulf countries including Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates These countries funded LeJ and other Sunni militant groups primarily to counter the rising influence of Iran’s revolutionary Shiism.”

Astonishingly, despite these admissions, the US works politically, financially, economically, and even militarily in tandem with these very same state-sponsors of rampant, global terrorism. And while Saudi Arabia funds terrorism in Pakistan, the US is well documented to be funding political subversion in the very areas where the most heinous attacks are being carried out.

The US State Department’s National Endowment for Democracy (NED) has been directly funding and supporting the work of the “Balochistan Institute for Development” (BIFD) which claims to be “the leading resource on democracy, development and human rights in Balochistan, Pakistan”. In addition to organising the annual NED-BFID “Workshop on Media, Democracy and Human Rights”, BFID reports that USAID had provided funding for a “media-centre” for the Balochistan Assembly to “provide better facilities to reporters who cover the proceedings of the Balochistan Assembly”. We must assume BFID meant reporters “trained” at NED-BFID workshops.

There is also Voice of Balochistan whose every top-story is US-funded propaganda drawn from foundation-funded Reporters Without Borders, Soros-funded Human Rights Watch, and even a direct message from the US State Department itself. Like other US State Department funded propaganda outfits around the world – such as Thailand’s Prachatai – funding is generally obfuscated in order to maintain “credibility” even when the front’s constant torrent of obvious propaganda more than exposes them.

Perhaps the most absurd operations being run to undermine Pakistan through the “Free Balochistan” movement are the US and London-based organisations. The “Baloch Society of North America” almost appears to be a parody at first, but nonetheless serves as a useful aggregate and bellwether regarding US meddling in Pakistan’s Balochistan province. The group’s founder, Dr Wahid Baloch, openly admits he has met with US politicians in regards to Balochistan’s independence. This includes Neo-Con warmonger, PNAC signatory, corporate-lobbyist, and National Endowment for Democracy director Zalmay Khalilzad.

Dr Wahid Baloch considers Balochistan province “occupied” by both the Iranian and Pakistani governments – he and his movement’s humanitarian hand-wringing gives Washington the perfect pretext to create an armed conflagration against either Iran or Pakistan, or both, as planned in detail by various US policy think-tanks.

There is also the Baloch Students Organisation-Azad, or BSO. While it maintains a presence in Pakistan, it has coordinators based in London. London-based BSO members include “information secretaries” that propagate their message via social media, just as US and British-funded youth organisations did during the West’s operations against other targeted nations during the US-engineered “Arab Spring”. And while the US does not openly admit to funding and arming terrorists in Pakistan yet, many across established Western policy think-tanks have called for it.

Selig Harrison, of the Centre for International Policy, has published two pieces regarding the armed “liberation” of Balochistan.

Harrison’s February 2011 piece, “Free Baluchistan,” calls to “aid the 6 million Baloch insurgents fighting for independence from Pakistan in the face of growing ISI repression”. He continues by explaining the various merits of such meddling by stating: “Pakistan has given China a base at Gwadar in the heart of Baloch territory. So an independent Balochistan would serve US strategic interests in addition to the immediate goal of countering Islamist forces.”

Harrison would follow up his frank call to carve up Pakistan by addressing the issue of Chinese-Pakistani relations in a March 2011 piece titled, “The Chinese Cozy up to the Pakistanis”. He states: “China’s expanding reach is a natural and acceptable accompaniment of its growing power—but only up to a point.” He continues: “To counter what China is doing in Pakistan, the United States should play hardball by supporting the movement for an independent Balochistan along the Arabian Sea and working with Baloch insurgents to oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar. Beijing wants its inroads into Gilgit and Baltistan to be the first step on its way to an Arabian Sea outlet at Gwadar.”

The prophetic words of Harrison should ring loud in one’s ears today. It is in fact this month that Pakistan officially hands over the port in Gwadar to China, and Harrison’s armed militants are creating bloodshed and chaos, attempting to trigger a destructive sectarian war that will indeed threaten to “oust the Chinese from their budding naval base at Gwadar”.

Like in Syria, we have a documented conspiracy, years in the making, being carried out before our very eyes. The people of Pakistan must not fall into the trap laid by the West who seeks to engulf Balochistan in sectarian bloodshed with the aid of Saudi and Qatari-laundered cash and weapons. For the rest of the world, we must continue to uncover the corporate-financier special interests driving these insidious plots, boycott and permanently replace them on a local level.

The US-Saudi terror racket has spilled blood from New York City, across Northern Africa, throughout the Middle East, and as far as Pakistan and beyond. If we do not undermine and ultimately excise these special interests, their plans and double games will only get bolder and the inevitability of their engineered chaos affecting us individually will only grow.

The writer is a geopolitical researcher and writer based in Bangkok, Thailand. This article was also carried by Global Research.