British Creation and Control of Islamic Terror:
Background to China’s Defeat of Terror in Xinjiang

by Mike Billington

[Print version of this article]

This article is based on the report that Mike Billington presented on the LaRouche PAC Fireside Chat on Thursday, January 2, 2020. The full, almost two-hour video, including dialogue with the audience, is available here.

Jan. 6—The hysteria about China in the United States, as addressed in the EIR pamphlet, “End the McCarthyite Witch Hunt Against China and President Trump,” must be viewed as seriously as the hysteria about the non-existent weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The American people have been inundated by the corporate press with lies asserting that China has created “concentration camps” in which millions of Uighur Muslims have been locked up, forbidden to practice their religion, and forbidden to see their families. The Congress has passed a bill imposing sanctions on China for this alleged set of horrendous attacks on the human rights of the Muslim population.

Consider that this bill came from a Congress that fully supported the Bush and Obama wars, which slaughtered hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, of innocent Muslims in Iraq, Libya, and Syria—supposedly to combat terrorism—driving millions more from their homes into refugee camps or to risk death in perilous journeys to Europe.

President Trump rightfully denounced these wars as the greatest strategic mistake in American history. Yet the Congress and the media condemn China, which has ended the terrorist scourge in their country without bombings or military assaults. Instead, the terrorists have been incarcerated. But China, at the same time, invested in extraordinary economic development throughout the region and provided education and vocational training to the youth being subjected to terrorist ideology by the radical jihadists who preach a perverted version of Islam to inspire terrorism. These young people in China were given religious training by Islamic teachers and scholars, presenting a true interpretation of Islam to refute the jihadist lies. (See Christine Bierre, “Xinjiang Province: China Rejects All Accusations,” https://larouchepub.com/other/2019/4631-xinjiang_province_china_reject.html)

This report will examine the true roots of the terrorist threat in China, by looking at the long, ugly history of the British Empire’s intentional sponsorship, and even creation, of Islamic terrorist movements that have been used to undermine sovereign nations, targeting nationalists who refuse to submit to the Empire’s economic and political dictates. I will convey the overwhelming proof, even in the words of those responsible, such as Winston Churchill and Maggie Thatcher, that this was the intent of the British Empire. General Michael Flynn, in fact, was targeted by those British and American intelligence officials who are attempting to implement regime change against President Trump, because Gen. Flynn had publicly identified the fact that President Obama was funding and arming terrorists, intentionally, in order to achieve regime change against the sovereign nation states of Southwest Asia.

The British Build Wahhabi Terrorism

This funding and arming of terrorists on a large scale started back in World War I. The war itself was launched by the British in order to destroy Germany and the Ottoman Empire, to gain geopolitical control over the “heartland” of Eurasia, and to assert control over the oil-rich nations in the Arab world. They were terrified that the Germans were moving to create a railroad to Baghdad, linking up Europe with Southwest Asia and potentially with all of Asia, undermining the British Imperial control that had been maintained by Britain’s superior naval forces and the City of London’s control over the financing of trade.

The British succeeded; Germany was defeated and destroyed, creating the conditions that led to the next world war. The Ottoman Empire was also defeated and destroyed. In the process, the Caliphate of the Islamic world was shifted from Turkey to Arabia, then under a British protectorate. Soon thereafter, the British overthrew the Hashemite government that they had put in power in Arabia, and supported instead the House of Ibn Saud, creating what became known as Saudi Arabia in 1932. Saud was a radical fundamentalist, a sponsor of the ideas of the 18th century figure, Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who created the fundamentalist Islamic ideology known as Wahhabism. It is Wahhabism that has been the ideology of the primary terrorist movements over the past decades, including al-Qaeda and ISIS.

Here are the words of one of the most evil men in history, Winston Churchill, who said the following in a speech before the House of Commons in 1921. He described the Wahhabites, the Saud network, as—

austere, intolerant, well-armed, and bloodthirsty . . . they hold as an article of duty as well as faith, to kill all who do not share their opinion, and to make slaves of their wives and children. Women have been put to death in Wahhabi villages for simply appearing in the streets. It is a penal offense to wear a silk garment. Men have been killed for smoking a cigarette.

So, this is Winston Churchill in an honest moment. Soon after that he said, as quoted in Secret Affairs: Britain’s Collusion with Radical Islam, by Mark Curtis (2018),

My admiration for Ibn Saud was deep, because of his unfailing loyalty to us.

This is what you’re dealing with, with the British Imperialists. They know full well what they are supporting in their relationship with the Saud family and the Saudi Arabian government. This kind of radical fundamentalism and its jihadist terrorism offshoots were used to undermine any nationalist government that refused to submit to the Empire centered in the City of London.

The Muslim Brotherhood was created in 1928 in Egypt, which had been a British protectorate since 1882. The British covertly supported the founding of the Muslim Brotherhood, appreciating that its theme was that the “Quran is our constitution”—i.e., no nation-states, no sovereign countries, no nationalism. This, of course, was exactly what the British used in their efforts to overthrow nationalists—Egypt’s Gamal Abdel Nasser and others.

India is a classic case. After World War II, India won its freedom from the British Empire under the leadership of Gandhi and Nehru. But the British would not allow independence to go through without creating the potential for permanent conflict. The British supported Muhammad Ali Jinnah, the head of the All-India Muslim League, an Islamist fundamentalist who insisted that India be divided by creating the Muslim state of Pakistan. Despite the efforts of Gandhi and Nehru to keep India united, the British succeeded in imposing the division, creating a permanent conflict that is still not fully resolved today. This is the British method.

The Bernard Lewis Plan

Between 1957 and 1965, the same thing was done to Indonesia. British intelligence, working from its outpost in Singapore, and with help from the CIA, sponsored and armed radical Islamic movements with ties to the Indonesian military for a series of coup attempts against President Sukarno, who had led Indonesia’s war of independence against the Dutch after World War II. After a few failed efforts, the British succeeded in creating a mass Muslim uprising against Sukarno and his popular base in 1965. Perhaps as many as hundreds of thousands of people were slaughtered in one of the greatest bloodlettings of history, openly supported by the British, the Australians, and the United States.

President John Kennedy had defended Sukarno, but with Kennedy’s assassination in 1963, the military-industrial complex and its associated intelligence networks were successful in turning the U.S. into a “dumb giant” carrying out colonial warfare for the British, in Africa, in Indonesia, and of course in Indochina.

In the 1970s, the Saudis carried out a vast expansion of Wahhabism around the world. They created thousands and thousands of mosques and madrassas (Islamic schools) throughout the world, teaching the Wahhabist perversion of Islam. By the 1990s London became known as “Londonistan,” first called that by French President Jacques Chirac after the bombing of the Paris metro in 1995. Londonistan was known to be the center for virtually every one of these Islamic jihadist movements. The British argued simply: “What you call terrorists, we call freedom fighters.”

In 1979, the British ran a coup in Iran, overthrew Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and put the Ayatollah Khomeini and his Shi’a version of Islamic fundamentalism into power. At the time, BBC was widely recognized as the source of the “color revolution” attacks against the Shah, and for bringing in taped speeches of the Ayatollah from France. While the British never officially endorsed the Khomeini mullahs who took over Iran, they had succeeded in giving new life to the historic Sunni-Shi’a conflict, creating yet again a permanent conflict through imperial “divide and conquer” policies.

It was also in 1979 that the British and the U.S. began their Afghanistan operation, aimed at creating a global terrorist capacity. A pro-Russian regime had come to power in Afghanistan, and the British and their assets in the U.S. began supporting the Islamist opposition to the pro-communist government, which led to the Russian military intervention to support that government against the Islamist Mujahideen insurgency.

Zbigniew Brzezinski, Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor, said he intended to draw Russia into “their own Vietnam.”

Once the Russians went in, the jihadist operation went into full swing. Zbigniew Brzezinski ran the U.S. side of the operation based on what was known as the Bernard Lewis Plan. Bernard Lewis was the leading British scholar of Islam and political adviser in both the UK and the U.S., and the author of the concept of an inevitable “clash of civilizations.” He proposed the creation of an Arc of Crisis, building radical Islamist regimes on the borders of Russia and China, including within Russia in the upper Caucasus, and within China in Xinjiang, all aimed at destabilizing those two nations. Wahhabists from throughout the world were shipped into Afghanistan, armed and trained in insurgency by British MI6 and the CIA, to fight the Russians and the pro-Russian government.

The U.S. Congress, after a big fight, voted to send Stinger missiles and other advanced weaponry to these jihadists. The movie, “Charlie Wilson’s War,” was later produced to glorify Congressman Charlie Wilson, who persuaded the U.S. Congress to arm these “freedom fighters” against the “evil Russians.” The Stinger missiles were ultimately used against the U.S. by terrorists around the world.

Margaret Thatcher’s ‘Freedom Fighters’

As for the British, here is what UK Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher had to say in 1979 about the creation of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan:

There was a tide of self-confidence and self-awareness in the Muslim world which preceded the Iranian Revolution and will outlast its present excesses. The West should recognize this with respect, not hostility. The Middle East is an area where we all have much at stake. It is in our own interests, as well as in the interests of the people of that region, that they build on their own deep, religious traditions.

Now of course, by “their own deep, religious tradition,” the Iron Lady did not mean Islam, but Wahhabism. Just as in Xinjiang today, when you read that the Uighurs are not allowed to practice their religion, what is meant is that they are not allowed to practice a terrorist pseudo-religion, but in fact, are encouraged to learn from the hundreds of thousands of imams in China who teach actual Islam.

Thatcher continued: “We do not wish to see them succumb to the fraudulent appeal of imported Marxism.” So you see the intention there. Thatcher later objected to calling the jihadists “rebels,” although they were fighting the government as well as the Russian forces sent in to defend the government:

This is a strange word to use to me, of people who are fighting to defend their country against the foreign invader. Surely, they are genuine freedom fighters, fighting to free their country from the alien oppressor.

It is useful to consider whether the British today would say that the Taliban and ISIS forces fighting against the British and American occupiers over these past 19 years are “freedom fighters.”

The British, the Bushes and Obama

When the Russians were forced out of Afghanistan, the jihadists returned to their countries of origin, and the global terrorist movement known as al-Qaeda was born, thanks to the British and their foolish American assets.

The head of Saudi intelligence at that time was Prince Turki, the cousin of Prince Bandar, who was the Saudi ambassador to the U.S. from 1983 to 2005, and a close personal friend of both Bush presidents. Bandar and his wife funded several of the terrorists who ran the 9/11 attacks on the United States. It was Turki who personally sent Osama bin Laden, a member of the family running the largest construction company in Saudi Arabia, to Afghanistan when the Russians deployed their military into the country. Bin Laden stayed in Afghanistan until near the end of the war.

Two of the ethnic groups with large numbers of people in the “Afghansi” operation (as it has been called) were the Chechens from the Russian Caucasus and the Uighurs from China. Many were trained in Pakistan, which was then ruled by the military dictator Zia-ul-Haq, who had run a military coup against the elected government of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto in 1977, subsequently having Bhutto executed. The military officer in charge of training the jihadis was Gen. Pervez Musharraf, who later ran a military coup of his own and ruled Pakistan from 2001-2008. This was the Pakistan that was training terrorists for the war in Afghanistan, and for wars around the world, including the Chechen terrorism in Russia and the Uighur terrorism in China.

This then brings us to 9/11. Soon after George W. Bush was inaugurated President in 2001, along with Dick Cheney who had chosen himself to be Vice President, Lyndon LaRouche warned that there would soon be a “Reichstag Fire” in Washington or elsewhere in the U.S. As with the original Reichstag Fire, which was set by the Nazis but blamed on “communists” and used as justification for imposing a dictatorship and police-state rule, LaRouche warned that such an event in the U.S. would be used by the neoconservative Bush government to impose police state measures and to launch colonial wars with our “blood brothers” in the UK.

Indeed, the U.S. soon had the Patriot Act, which stripped the citizenry of fundamental constitutional rights, leading to the total surveillance exposed by Edward Snowden. Then came the “endless wars,” as President Trump has labelled them, in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya and Syria, fought under the rubric of a “war on terrorism,” ignoring the fact that the Iraqi, Libyan and Syrian nationalist governments were all fiercely anti-terror. It is now abundantly clear that the “war on terror” conducted by Bush and Obama was in fact a war on sovereign, nationalist nation-states, openly conducted in collaboration with the terrorist networks created by the British.

The Defeat of al-Qaeda and ISIS

To conclude, I will discuss something that my associate Hussein Askary pointed out to me. Askary is himself an Iraqi Muslim and the co-author of the Schiller Institute Special Report, Extending the New Silk Road to West Asia and Africa. To a very real extent, he said, this Wahhabi terrorism operation has been defeated. It’s not completely defeated, and the British aren’t going to give up easily, but it’s been largely defeated by the collaboration between Russia, China, and President Trump.

There are two aspects to this. One is the way in which it was dealt with internally within countries subjected to terrorist attacks; and secondly, the way it was dealt with through the Belt and Road development policies.

In Russia, the Chechens, or rather the Wahhabi Islamic layers within Chechnya, launched a revolt which took over Chechnya in the early 1990s, in the chaos following the collapse of the Soviet Union. When Putin came to power in late 1999, he launched a full-scale war to defeat this insurgency and the terrorist attacks which were being carried out by the jihadists, even in Moscow. It was a brutal war, but he succeeded in crushing this Wahhabi-infested jihadist takeover of this area of the Russian Federation. It is important to note that the leaders of the revolt in Chechnya had their headquarters in Londonistan.

China’s Model for Counter-Terrorism

In China, there were terrorist assaults by Uighurs who had been trained in Pakistan, many of whom had already been engaged in the Middle East wars as well. Between 1997 and 2014, a series of deadly terrorist attacks by these Uighurs swept through Xinjiang and other areas of China, even in Beijing—bombings, assaults on markets and train stations with machetes, running cars into crowds—killing a large number of people.

President Xi Jinping at first thought that the dramatic economic development taking place in Xinjiang would be enough to counter the terrorists. Xinjiang was a major target of China’s commitment to alleviate poverty by the end of 2020 and was also the hub for the New Silk Road rail routes from China to the West. But Xi realized, after an increase in terrorist attacks leading up to 2014, that these networks didn’t give a damn about economic development.

Rather than adopting the self-destructive path of the “war on terror” conducted by the British and the U.S. under Bush and Obama—which destroyed entire nations and actually created more terrorists in the process—Xi created a new and creative solution, one which should actually be seen as a model for counter-terror operations worldwide. The development process was accelerated, while the young people who were being subjected to Wahhabi indoctrination were brought into educational centers, to provide vocational training, civics classes in Chinese law, improvement in the national language where needed, and religious education led by Islamic scholars. They were detained for an average of eight months. As of Dec. 9, 2019, all those detained have “graduated,” and the camps are now being transformed into public education facilities.

There has not been a terrorist incident in China for the past three years.

The Chinese didn’t bomb anybody. They arrested and incarcerated the actual terrorists, and they educated the rest of the population, succeeding in ending the terrorist threat within China.

Putin and Trump Collaborate

In Syria, the defeat of al-Qaeda and ISIS was possible only because Russia intervened, at the request of the sovereign government of Syria in 2015, to support the war against the terrorists, and to stop the Obama administration effort to carry out another disastrous regime-change operation in the region by foreign invaders collaborating with terrorists. When President Trump came to power—and this is very important—he openly declared that, “We are not there for regime change.” He had campaigned against these regime-change wars, these “endless wars.” He said, “We’re there to defeat ISIS, and then we’re going to leave.” He didn’t like Assad, and he was sucked into some pinprick attacks by several “false-flag” chemical weapons attacks, which were not done by Assad at all, but were staged by the British-run White Helmets.

Most importantly, although the Congress had passed laws preventing U.S. cooperation with Russia in military matters, Trump and Putin effectively coordinated their anti-terrorist campaign under the guise of “deconfliction.”

The remaining problem is that Trump’s military leaders and the neocons in his cabinet have refused to follow his instructions. If the coup attempt, now in stage three with the phony impeachment, can be fully defeated, Trump can be liberated to do what he intends, to end these illegal wars.

Belt & Road the Crucial Ingredient

Lastly—and this was the point made by my associate Hussein Askary—the Belt and Road was the crucial ingredient in ending the British Wahhabi terror operation. The two countries that were crucial in facilitating this terrorism movement were Turkey and Pakistan. Pakistan, under military dictators, was under the influence of the British and the Saudis. But then China went into Pakistan with the largest of all their Belt and Road projects—the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC). They are in the process of transforming that country, with new roads and rail lines, new ports, pipelines, power plants, dams, and more. Under the new Pakistani leadership, and as part of the Belt and Road, they have no reason to continue training terrorists, and every reason to join in win-win projects with China and all other states.

Turkey, under the Erdo˘gan government, was working directly with the British and the CIA in moving Qaddafi’s stocks of weapons, left behind after the destruction of Libya by Obama and the Europeans, from Libya into Turkey, and then into Syria. The weapons went to al-Qaeda and other terrorist groups which Erdo˘gan, the British and the U.S. were supporting against the Assad regime. The Russians finally intervened militarily in Syria, but also politically in Turkey, essentially telling them: “Cut this crap out, and we’ll help you develop your country. The Belt and Road will come in and help you develop your country, but you’ve got to cut it out.”

Now, they haven’t completely cut it out—Erdo˘gan is still tied to the Muslim Brotherhood, and is now threatening to send troops into Libya, which could provoke even more chaos. It will take the U.S., Russia and China, working together, to prevent such a move, and to combine their efforts not only to defeat terrorism, but to end the threat of new terrorist movements in the only way possible—through internationally coordinated development of the entire region. Here again, this requires that the U.S., Russia and China, as well as India and others, join forces, as we see in the model set by the Belt and Road Initiative.

This is the way in which the al-Qaeda operation was defeated—through a universal concept based on a New Paradigm for the world, ending the British imperial design and working together as the basis on which to create this New Paradigm of peace through development.