CIA plots and Tunisian realities

[Zainab_M]

Written by Lauren Booth     
Thursday, 24 February 2011 00:00
Muslim Politics

Those who should be Wikileaks greatest friends have (in part) turned into its harshest critics. 'Deals' with Israel, talk of Assange's mental health, such things have served to partially undermine the world changing revelations of this stunning agency.

Now it's the turn of critical thinkers and those who may be called 'conspiracy theorists' to turn their gaze towards the Pan Arab, North African uprisings.

In Tunisia, the people here are not 'happy' about events in Egypt, despite intense brotherly (sisterly) support for the uprising itself. Why? Because the people here fear/sense that the military handover that followed the ousting of Mubarak is a catastrophic mistake.

Let's take a look at the facts. As in the case of Iran under the Shah, the US stood by the 33-year dictatorship of Hosni Mubarak. Their simplistic dogma, shared by most European nations, and extended to become what Tony Blair called his 'world view' ran like this: 'Either secular repression or anti-American Islamism’.

The Egyptian security services and the CIA have been unhealthy co-dependents for over six decades.

In 1952, the young agency supported the Free Officers Movement that toppled the monarchy. Since 1995 it was highly placed in the dark partnership against 'Islamic fundamentalist terror.' A catch-all remit that Ben Ali of Tunisia had polished into a shining beacon of oppression in the eighties.

In Egypt the CIA has always played with two decks. A dual relationship flourished with Nasser’s successor, Anwa al-Sadat. It supported him in the open, whilst spying on him in the gloomy corridors of power.

“A CIA security operation in Egypt, designed to provide...Sadat with protection and warnings of coup and assassination plots, also provided the CIA with electronic and human access to Egypt’s government, its society and its leader,” US journalist Bob Woodward of the Washington Post wrote in “Veil: The Secret Wars of the CIA, 1981-1987.

“The place was wired,” he stated.

The CIA’s double-vision in Egypt, of course, was no different than in any other “friendly” country. But the partnership with its Cairo counterpart intensified in the mid-1990s with what it saw as the swelling threat of Islamic fundamentalism.

Now, with the military firmly in power (albeit, it is hoped, temporarily) there are fears in Tunis that the “Egyptian revolution,” has turned into a behind-the-scenes military putsch, intent on imposing a new junta of CIA puppet generals.

Central to this theory is growing evidence that such a sly coup involved the seizure or blocking of the Suez Canal. The canal is the historic Egyptian waterway, which still carries over 8% of all seaborne world trade. And which the British imperialists tried to grab back in 1956. Incidentally the US and the UK still wish to exclude China, Iran, and Russia, from using the Suez.

So, there are mutterings that that Mubarak was toppled in the end, not by the brave millions on the streets of Cairo and Alexandria and beyond but by Washington and London. Why get rid of this useful despot and risk the spread of popular revolt in the region? Because, Mubarak supposedly opposed the current US-UK plan to organize a block of Sunni Arab states such as Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf states — under a US nuclear umbrella and shoulder to shoulder with Israel — for the purpose of confronting and provoking a war with Iran, Syria, Hezbollah.

Sends a cold chill down the spine doesn't it?

If this is the case, then the fall of Mubarak, has taken the Middle East a big step further down the road to a vast, general war.
As for the madman's Junta; they have now dissolved parliament, shredded the constitution, and announced six months of martial law. Not a bad result for an authoritarian regime with a history of working with imperialist oppressors.

In Tunisia, they are determined the same will not happen here.

[Ruhi_Rose]

hummm, interesting.  But certain views sound a bit far-fetched ....