Rise of Extremists was ‘a willful decision’: Former DIA Chief Flynn
Nour Rida
A clear declaration that the White House took a "willful decision" to create and support the terrorist groups sweeping across the Middle East goes unnoticed in the Western mainstream media, despite the fact that this statement was made by the former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency Michael Flynn in an interview on the al-Jazeera English channel, which says it bring topics to light that often go under-reported.
Speculations were made a few times that just like the CIA-funded al-Qaeda had been used as a facade by the US to achieve its own ‘geopolitical and national interests' over the past two decades, "ISIL" was also nothing more than another proxy group for the US and its allies to achieve more gains in the region. Today, a clear statement from a former US official who was directly in charge of intelligence operations in the region has said his word and confirmed this is news.
Brad Hoff first shed light on al-Jazeera's episode in an analysis that was published in the Levantreport.
In an interview with al-Jazeera's Mehdi Hasan, Flynn confirmed that not only had he studied the DIA memo predicting the West's backing of an "Islamic State" in Syria when it came across his desk in 2012, but also asserts that the White House's sponsoring of radical jihadists [that would emerge as "ISIL" and al-Nusra Front] against the Syrian regime was "a willful decision."
What makes this big news is the career history of Flynn giving the story credibility, who served as the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, commander of the Joint Functional Component Command for Intelligence, Surveillance and Reconnaissance, and chair of the Military Intelligence Board from July 24, 2012, to August 2, 2014.
In addition to carrying out conventional and special operations, Flynn was in charge of carrying out senior intelligence assignments. He also served as the senior intelligence officer for the Joint Special Operations Command, where he was credited with creating innovative techniques for interrogation operations and operations-intelligence fusion, reportedly leading to major breakthroughs in counterterrorism operations in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere against al-Qaeda and its associated movements.
During the interview aired on the Qatari-based English speaking channel, Flynn, and in response to several questions, said that the US administration made a ‘willful decision' to do what it is doing, referring to what the host Hasan underlined as ‘a US willful decision to support an insurgency that had Salafsts, al-Qaeda and the Muslim Brotherhood.'
Upon a question on whether it is true that in 2012 the US was helping coordinate arms transfers to those same groups [Salafists, Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq], and on why did not he stop that if he was worried about the rise of "Islamic extremists", Flynn frankly told al-Jazeera "I hate to say it's not my job...but that...my job was to...was to to ensure that the accuracy of our intelligence that was being presented was as good as it could be."
A declassified secret US government document -dating back to 2012- obtained by the public interest law firm, Judicial Watch, had revealed that Western governments deliberately allied with al-Qaeda and other ‘Islamist' extremist groups to topple Syrian President Bashir al-Assad.
The revelations, confirmed by Flynn's statements, contradict the official line of Western government on their policies in Syria and the region. These have raised alarming questions about secret Western support for violent extremists in the Middle East while using the pretext of mushrooming threat of terror to justify excessive interference in the Middle East region, where US drones and intelligence work allegedly to fight terrorism resembled by the very same groups the White House helped create.
Among the batch of documents obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, released earlier this week, is a US Defense Intelligence Agency [DIA] document then classified as "secret," dated 12th August 2012.
The declassified DIA document, which the al-Jazeera host Hasan had in his hand while asking Flynn about the matter, confirmed that the main component of the anti-government rebel forces by this time comprised extremist insurgents affiliated to groups that would lead to the emergence of ISIL. Knowing that, these groups still received support from Western militaries and their regional allies.
The DIA document is an Intelligence Information Report [IIR], not a "finally evaluated intelligence" assessment, but its contents are assessed before distribution. The report was circulated throughout the US intelligence community, including to the State Department, Central Command, the Department of Homeland Security, the CIA, FBI, among other agencies.
"The Salafist, the Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Qaeda in Iraq are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria... The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition," read the 7-page DIA document.
The secret doc. Further stated that al-Qaeda in Iraq [AQI], the precursor to the ‘Islamic State in Iraq,' [ISI] which became the ‘Islamic State in Iraq and Levant,' "supported the Syrian opposition from the beginning, both ideologically and through the media."
In a striking prediction, the Pentagon document explicitly forecast the probable declaration of "an Islamic State through its union with other terrorist organizations in Iraq and Syria."
According to security analyst Charles Shoebridge, a former British Army and Metropolitan Police counter terrorism intelligence officer, the crisis across Iraq and Syria cannot be resolved without first addressing the extent to which western policies created the crisis in the first place.
"The US, UK and France contributed to the collapse of governance [in Syria]... by funding, training and equipping ‘moderate' rebels with little realistic consideration of with whom such funds, trained fighters and ‘non lethal' aid [such as armoured vehicles, body armour, secure military radios and weapon sights] would end up," said Shoebridge.
"Similarly, the West did nothing to discourage vast flows of funds and arms from their allies Saudi Arabia, Qatar and others towards rebel groups irrespective of, or perhaps because of, their extreme interpretations of Sunni Islam."
Shoebridge pointed out that the US and UK in particular, "through the covert work of MI6 and the CIA," appear to have "played a key role in facilitating the flow of arms and jihadist fighters to Syria from such places as Libya, the Caucuses and Balkans, with the aim of militarily boosting those fighting Assad."
