“The Caliph”, a CIA Blockbuster Between Fiction and Reality

By Manlio Dinucci

“It was like watching a movie,” President Trump said after witnessing the elimination of Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the Caliph, Daesh’s leader, transmitted in the White House Situation Room. It was there that in 2011 President Obama witnessed the elimination of the then enemy number one, Osama Bin Laden, leader of Al Qaeda.

The same staging: the US secret services had long since located the enemy; he was not captured but eliminated: Bin Laden was killed, al-Baghdadi committed suicide or was “suicided”; the body disappeared: that of Bin Laden buried in the sea, the remains of al Baghdadi disintegrated by his explosive belt were also dispersed at sea.

The same company that produced the film: the Intelligence Community, made up of 17 federal organizations. In addition to the CIA (Central Intelligence Agency) there is the DIA (Defence Intelligence Agency), but each sector of the Armed Forces, as well as the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security, has its own secret service.

For military actions, the Intelligence Community uses the Command of Special Forces, deployed in at least 75 countries, whose official mission includes, in addition to the “direct action to eliminate or capture enemies”, the “non-conventional war conducted by external forces, trained and organized by the Command”.

This is exactly what took place in Syria in 2011, the same year that the US and NATO wars demolished Libya. This is demonstrated by documented evidence, already published. For example:

• In March 2013, the New York Times published a detailed survey on the CIA network through which rivers of arms for Islamist militants trained by the US Special Forces Command arrive in Turkey and Jordan, with funding from Saudi Arabia and other Gulf monarchies [1].
• In May 2013, a month after founding Daesh, al-Baghdadi met with a delegation from the United States Senate in Syria headed by John McCain, as revealed in photographic documentation [2].
• In May 2015, Judicial Watch revealed a document by General Michael Flynn, dated August 12, 2012, in which it was stated that there was “the possibility of establishing a Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and[that] this is exactly what the Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey that support the opposition want” [3].
• In July 2016, Wikileaks revealed a 2012 email from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in which she wrote that, given the Iran-Syria relationship, “the overthrow of Assad would be an immense benefit for Israel, reducing its fear of losing the nuclear monopoly” [4].

This explains why, although the US and its allies are launching the military campaign against Daesh in 2014, Daesh’s forces can advance undisturbed in open spaces with long columns of armed vehicles.

The Russian military intervention in 2015, in support of the Damascus forces, reversed the fate of the conflict. Moscow’s strategic objective is to prevent the demolition of the Syrian state, which would cause chaos as in Libya, exploitable by the USA and NATO to attack Iran and surround Russia.

The United States, short-circuited, continues to play the card of Syria’s fragmentation, supporting the Kurdish independence fighters, and then abandoning them in order not to lose Turkey, NATO’s outpost in the region.

The US/NATO War to Demolish Syria

Against such a backdrop, it is understandable why al-Baghdadi, like Bin Laden (formerly a US ally against Russia in the Afghan war, then in Bosnia and Herzegovina), could not be captured for public trial, but had to physically disappear to make evidence of his real role in the US strategy disappear. That’s why Trump loved  so much the movie with a happy ending.

* Award winning author Manlio Dinucci is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG).

Notes

[1] Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From C.I.A, par C. J. Chivers and Eric Schmitt, The New York Times, March 14, 2013. “Billions of dollars’ worth of arms against Syria”, by Thierry Meyssan, Translation Pete Kimberley, Voltaire Network, 18 July 2017.

[2] “John McCain, Conductor of the “Arab Spring” and the Caliph”, by Thierry Meyssan, Voltaire Network, 18 August 2014. “John McCain admitted he is regular contact with Islamic State”, Voltaire Network, 20 November 2014.

[3] Report of the Military Intelligence Agency to the various departments of the Obama administration on jihadists in Syria, August 12, 2012.

[4] New Iran and Syria, Hillary Clinton, December 31, 2012, Wikileaks.