Here Comes Al-Qaeda 2.0

The C.I.A. fathered Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda (with Pakistan's I.S.I. as the obstetrician throughout the actual pregnancy & birth), during America's 1979-89 proxy war against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan – but promptly abandoned its bastard son as soon as the last Soviet soldier had fled from that “graveyard of empires”, evidently leaving Al with profound abandonment issues (not to mention megalomaniac & psychopathic tendencies). Mind you, the C.I.A. had never been much of a father – showering its ill-begotten offspring with gifts of cash & expensive toys, but only from a very discreet distance.

Like many such dysfunctional father-son relationships, the wider world has suffered, over the past couple of decades, Al's repeated, destructive attempts to get his father's attention, & his violent, abusive father's indiscriminate & brutal responses – culminating in the suspicious disappearance of the mother, Bin Laden (whose bullet-riddled body is rumoured to have been dumped at sea), & a major blood feud between the father (the C.I.A.) & the obstetrician (the I.S.I., who, it seems, may have been having a decade-plus-long affair with the mother)!

It's Déjà Vu All Over Again...

Now, however, the C.I.A. is screwing around again.

The first evidence came in reports from Libya of bands of Al-Qaeda-type fighters, apparently armed, equipped & – nominally, at least – “controlled” by Qatar's intelligence agency (a “close personal friend” of the C.I.A.).

Then, reports came in of hundreds (or even thousands?) of Al-Qaeda-type fighters being ferried from Libya to the Turkish border of Syria, where the so-called “Free Syrian Army” suddenly materialised (alongside hundreds of U.S., British & French Special Forces troops) & began to attack targets in Syria – both military & civilian.

It's clear the C.I.A. has a penchant for exotic partners, & it no doubt thinks that the Qataris are taking appropriate precautions. But, given the C.I.A.'s track record of leaving its bastards, blood feuds & blowbacks all over Central & South America, South East Asia, Central Asia, the Middle East, etc., how long can it be before Al's younger, & even nastier, brother rises up to terrorise the world?

Worse-Off Is The New Better-Off...

The Libyan people are undoubtedly better off without Gaddafi & his spawn. But they (&, probably, the world) won't be better off for long if the Al-Qaeda-type forces unleashed by the C.I.A., & their Qatari cronies, aren't contained – & the signs are that the C.I.A./NATO won't, & probably can't, contain them (& may even be nurturing them, as they did in Afghanistan). And Libyans certainly won't be better off for long if the looting of their oil by NATO countries – with, it seems, the N.T.C.'s collaboration – isn't reversed (shades of Iraq, here).

Similarly, the Syrian people would undoubtedly be better off without Assad & his thuggish Ba'ath party. But they must be left to do it on their own, similarly to the 2011 Tunisian & Egyptian revolutions.

The simple fact is that, because of the still open wounds of the Crusades, European Colonialism & the so-called “War on Terror” (which extremists like Bin Laden can easily exploit), any Western interference in Muslim countries – the more overt, the worse – risks serious global blowback.