Paris terror attacks — who profits?: Escobar
By Pepe Escobar on November 16, 2015 in AT Top Writers, Empire of Chaos, Pepe Escobar
Up to the very gloomy day when the “soldiers of the Caliphate” hit “the capital of abomination and perversions” – as ISIS/ISIL/Daesh framed its attack on Paris – French President Francois Hollande and his insufferable poseur of a Prime Minister Laurent Fabius were adamant: Assad must go.
For the Elysée palace, Assad equaled Daesh.
Rescuers evacuate an injured person near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, early on Nov. 14
A measure of the incongruence of Hollande’s administration is that none of his ENA-formed advisors told him he was becoming even more irrelevant than usual.
Russia and Iran were proving their point with the “4+1” (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq plus Hezbollah) actions on the ground and skies in Syria fighting all shades of Salafi-jihadism, “moderate” or otherwise.
And even the Obama administration – after multiple meetings between Secretary Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – was correcting its course. That culminated in those pregnant with meaning 35 minutes of Obama and Putin face to face in a side table at the G-20 in Antalya on Sunday.
Guess who remained aligned with Hollande up to the last, tragic minute: the ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi-jihadism, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and the GCC minions. The French government “reward”: plenty of juicy weapons deals. Here is just a partial list, coupled with hardcore French weaponizing of “moderate rebels.”
So this is how “socialist” – the dirtiest of words in the Beltway – France fights its own GWOT (Global War on Terror): showering Rafales over “moderate rebel” enabler Doha, and with Salafi-jihadi weaponizer Riyadh as best client. Business, unsurprisingly, is booming.
It took an unprecedented carnage in Paris for Hollande, Fabius and Prime Minister Valls to wake up from their torpor and see which way the – lethal – wind was blowing. Now it’s “war”. It’s “merciless.” And it’s against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.
Already in Vienna on Saturday, Lavrov and Kerry — seconded by the usual minions, some of them reluctantly — finally agreed to designate Jabhat al-Nusra, aka al-Qaeda in Syria, as terrorists, not “moderate rebels.”
And yet few in the West will remember poseur Fabius praising al-Nusra just a few weeks ago; they “do a good job” in Syria (“Ils font un bon boulot.”)
A French fighter jet leaves a base to hit IS targets in Syria
Hollande, immediately after unveiling France’s remix of the 2001 Bush-declared “war on terra”, bombed Raqqa, the fake “Caliphate” capital. Fabius, in Antalya, defended the decision as “political”; France had to be “present and active” following the Paris massacre.
“Active” should be interpreted as “previously noncommittal,” at best. But “political”? Not really; rather borderline unlawful. ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is not a state – as much as they bill themselves as a “Caliphate.” Assuming international law still applies, France’s invoked right of “self-defense” is illegal. Not to mention Paris was not invited by Damascus to strike inside Syrian territory, unlike the Russian Air Force.
Finally displaced from its splendid slumber, the French government had to strike Raqqa because after all the whole world is watching. Coordinated raids irrupted all across France, from Toulouse and Grenoble to Calais. France’s only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier – and Europe’s top (naval) dog – the Charles de Gaulle, leaves Toulon on Thursday for the Persian Gulf. Hollande proudly extolled the mission; it “bolsters Paris’ firepower.”
From torpor to resolve. But why only now?
It’s the oil, stupid
Jihad in Paris hit a calibrated conceptual spectrum – carefully mapped out by French insiders (disclosure: my own neighborhood, the 10ème, was targeted). My initial instinct, as I published on my Facebook page, was “Syraq” returnees. And not your usual al-Zawahiri-faithful underwear bomber, but white, ultra-pro, black-clad head to toe, AK-47-toting, very well trained, precision killers, as described by eyewitnesses.
French intel, after the (gruesome) fact, swore they were monitoring at least 200 French passport holders who came back from “Syraq.” Yet from the beginning evidence – or lack thereof — seemed to be pointing towards a monumental fail by French intel and the Ministry of Interior.
Of course there were so many accumulated reasons for blowback; resentment by swathes of young Muslims, who feel they are treated as third-rate citizens; France’s coddling of “moderate rebels”; Sarko The First and General Hollande’s wars on Libya and Mali; France as NATO enforcers; the meek bombing raids in Syria; and of course 3,000 ultra-radicalized “born again” French Muslims fighting in Syria for the fake “Caliphate.”
French intel did know, at least since August, that Daesh was planning a major hit. There were recent alerts by Baghdad intelligence and even rumblings of an imminent “French 9/11”. France was occasionally hitting Daesh; mostly the odd training camp, but also targeting Syria’s oil infrastructure at random.
Daesh is virtually a state oil major; Deir Ezzor province produces up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day, and other wells produce up to an extra 17,000 barrels. Daesh sells them to “independent traders”, aka smugglers, for up to $45 a barrel. As much as pumping oil is a key source of Daesh’s budget, still, technically, the fake “Caliphate” is profiting from an (aging) state infrastructure that ultimately belongs to the Syrian nation. To really hit Daesh where it hurts France — and the US and Britain — would need to rely on what they don’t have; top intel on the ground, not mere air strikes.
Which brings us back to Raqqa. The fake “Caliphate” capital is a key hub for all that oil smuggling. It also happens to be a potential hub for a future Pipelineistan gambit – be it the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline or its competitor from Qatar.
Make no mistake: both the US and France are very much focused on Raqqa. This “war” could be over in a few days if all those smugglers – who are in fact financing Daesh – were spotted and arrested (ground intel, again). Daesh’s money flow would be easily intercepted.
And guess who’s preventing this solution; Turkish intel, because for Ankara the prime obsession is “Assad must go”, not Daesh. There’s absolutely no way to defeat Daesh from above – as long as the usual suspects, especially Gulf petrodollar interests and Erdogan’s Ottomanism, continue to “support” it on the ground, directly, via endless subterfuges, or simply ignoring their operations.
The good news, as it stands, is that The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), covered by Russian air strikes, liberated Kuweyris airbase, not far from Aleppo, while Kurdish peshmerga, covered by US air strikes, liberated Sinjar in Iraq, west of Mosul. So Daesh will face a lot of trouble moving in and out between Mosul and Raqqa. That may signal the way towards Daesh start losing oilfields in northeast Syria.
For now, what’s certain is that when Daesh went on overdrive, no intel service seems to have seen it coming.
They attacked Russia via a Sinai spin-off, bringing down the Metrojet.
They attacked Lebanon, Shi’ites as a whole, Hezbollah – and indirectly, Iran – via the bombing in the Burj el-Barajneh Shi’ite neighborhood of Beirut. Symbolically, that was an attack against the “4+1” (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah).
And they attacked NATO in the heart of Paris (Hollande’s “act of war” crucially implies an attack against all NATO members. Incredible as it may seem, “moderate rebel” facilitator Turkey included.)
The strategic benefit of opening a war on three fronts – and attacking both Russia and NATO virtually at the same time – is more than dubious. As much as Daesh is flush; profits extensively from extortion, widespread pillaging and oil smuggling; and is showered with cash by generous GCC-based “donors”, that’s a little bit over the top.
The Belgian connection
Back in Paris, my initial working hypothesis was immediately confirmed: French intel started focusing on a single cell of Syria returnees as the perpetrators, before the investigation expanded – by accident – towards the Belgian connection, and “three coordinated teams of gunmen”, according to the Paris prosecutor.
That happened courtesy of a parking ticket found in a VW Polo; it led French intel to Molenbeek, aka “Little Morocco” northwest of downtown Brussels, a notorious Syrian returnee hub, crammed with shady, clandestine Salafi and Salafi-jihadi cells. As it stands, at least seven people in the European-wide investigation dragnet have been arrested in Molenbeek, and that’s where the Polo was rented. In the years after 9/11, I used to joke with local friends and sources, when I was back from the Gulf and walked the area, that I felt like “home”.
Belgian intel knows all there is to know about this state of affairs. The problem is essentially they can’t do anything about it – even as Belgium exhibits the largest per capita ratio of jihadis from “Syraq”; according to official numbers, 494 jihadis have been identified, 272 are still in “Syraq”, 75 are presumed dead, 134 are back, and 13 are on their way to the Levant.
So imagine the French investigation juggernaut arriving in Belgium by accident. Talk about a major intra-European security/intel failure. What they had was at best a hunch about homegrown – returnee – jihadis up to something, including, alarmingly, munitions specialists able to come up with made in Europe suicide vests and foot soldiers able to smuggle Kalashnikovs bought in the Balkans for 300 euros, as Europol well knows.
These are Caliph Ibrahim’s European “army.” Young. Born and bred in the EU. Usually double nationality. Statistically “invisible.” Totally integrated locally; what first struck me in Paris is how the targets in the 10ème and 11ème were carefully chosen.
Their loyalty is to a virtual de-territorialized nation (if only Deleuze and Guattari were alive to conceptualize it); and in a remixed 21st version of Etienne de la Boétie’s 1576 classic Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, they are “born-again” Muslims, born and bred in the developed West, deranged by Wahhabi Salafi-jihadism, and choosing to become slaves of a hazy “command and control” entity that is the embodiment of barbarism.
They learn to use weapons, technology, camouflage, and communication techniques just to become slave “soldiers”– voluntarily submitted to servitude. The infernal mechanism is simple; once you’ve graduated as a Syrian returnee, you got your homegrown diploma, and you’re free to attack the – secular republic – that issued your passport.
As for the notion that this small invisible army is supported by millions, that’s nonsense. The majority of France’s near 5 million Muslims is actually secular, galaxies away from Salafi-jihadism.
By Pepe Escobar on November 16, 2015 in AT Top Writers, Empire of Chaos, Pepe Escobar
Up to the very gloomy day when the “soldiers of the Caliphate” hit “the capital of abomination and perversions” – as ISIS/ISIL/Daesh framed its attack on Paris – French President Francois Hollande and his insufferable poseur of a Prime Minister Laurent Fabius were adamant: Assad must go.
For the Elysée palace, Assad equaled Daesh.
Rescuers evacuate an injured person near the Bataclan concert hall in central Paris, early on Nov. 14
A measure of the incongruence of Hollande’s administration is that none of his ENA-formed advisors told him he was becoming even more irrelevant than usual.
Russia and Iran were proving their point with the “4+1” (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq plus Hezbollah) actions on the ground and skies in Syria fighting all shades of Salafi-jihadism, “moderate” or otherwise.
And even the Obama administration – after multiple meetings between Secretary Kerry and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov – was correcting its course. That culminated in those pregnant with meaning 35 minutes of Obama and Putin face to face in a side table at the G-20 in Antalya on Sunday.
Guess who remained aligned with Hollande up to the last, tragic minute: the ideological matrix of all strands of Salafi-jihadism, Wahhabi Saudi Arabia, and the GCC minions. The French government “reward”: plenty of juicy weapons deals. Here is just a partial list, coupled with hardcore French weaponizing of “moderate rebels.”
So this is how “socialist” – the dirtiest of words in the Beltway – France fights its own GWOT (Global War on Terror): showering Rafales over “moderate rebel” enabler Doha, and with Salafi-jihadi weaponizer Riyadh as best client. Business, unsurprisingly, is booming.
It took an unprecedented carnage in Paris for Hollande, Fabius and Prime Minister Valls to wake up from their torpor and see which way the – lethal – wind was blowing. Now it’s “war”. It’s “merciless.” And it’s against ISIS/ISIL/Daesh.
Already in Vienna on Saturday, Lavrov and Kerry — seconded by the usual minions, some of them reluctantly — finally agreed to designate Jabhat al-Nusra, aka al-Qaeda in Syria, as terrorists, not “moderate rebels.”
And yet few in the West will remember poseur Fabius praising al-Nusra just a few weeks ago; they “do a good job” in Syria (“Ils font un bon boulot.”)
A French fighter jet leaves a base to hit IS targets in Syria
Hollande, immediately after unveiling France’s remix of the 2001 Bush-declared “war on terra”, bombed Raqqa, the fake “Caliphate” capital. Fabius, in Antalya, defended the decision as “political”; France had to be “present and active” following the Paris massacre.
“Active” should be interpreted as “previously noncommittal,” at best. But “political”? Not really; rather borderline unlawful. ISIS/ISIL/Daesh is not a state – as much as they bill themselves as a “Caliphate.” Assuming international law still applies, France’s invoked right of “self-defense” is illegal. Not to mention Paris was not invited by Damascus to strike inside Syrian territory, unlike the Russian Air Force.
Finally displaced from its splendid slumber, the French government had to strike Raqqa because after all the whole world is watching. Coordinated raids irrupted all across France, from Toulouse and Grenoble to Calais. France’s only nuclear-powered aircraft carrier – and Europe’s top (naval) dog – the Charles de Gaulle, leaves Toulon on Thursday for the Persian Gulf. Hollande proudly extolled the mission; it “bolsters Paris’ firepower.”
From torpor to resolve. But why only now?
It’s the oil, stupid
Jihad in Paris hit a calibrated conceptual spectrum – carefully mapped out by French insiders (disclosure: my own neighborhood, the 10ème, was targeted). My initial instinct, as I published on my Facebook page, was “Syraq” returnees. And not your usual al-Zawahiri-faithful underwear bomber, but white, ultra-pro, black-clad head to toe, AK-47-toting, very well trained, precision killers, as described by eyewitnesses.
French intel, after the (gruesome) fact, swore they were monitoring at least 200 French passport holders who came back from “Syraq.” Yet from the beginning evidence – or lack thereof — seemed to be pointing towards a monumental fail by French intel and the Ministry of Interior.
Of course there were so many accumulated reasons for blowback; resentment by swathes of young Muslims, who feel they are treated as third-rate citizens; France’s coddling of “moderate rebels”; Sarko The First and General Hollande’s wars on Libya and Mali; France as NATO enforcers; the meek bombing raids in Syria; and of course 3,000 ultra-radicalized “born again” French Muslims fighting in Syria for the fake “Caliphate.”
French intel did know, at least since August, that Daesh was planning a major hit. There were recent alerts by Baghdad intelligence and even rumblings of an imminent “French 9/11”. France was occasionally hitting Daesh; mostly the odd training camp, but also targeting Syria’s oil infrastructure at random.
Daesh is virtually a state oil major; Deir Ezzor province produces up to 40,000 barrels of oil a day, and other wells produce up to an extra 17,000 barrels. Daesh sells them to “independent traders”, aka smugglers, for up to $45 a barrel. As much as pumping oil is a key source of Daesh’s budget, still, technically, the fake “Caliphate” is profiting from an (aging) state infrastructure that ultimately belongs to the Syrian nation. To really hit Daesh where it hurts France — and the US and Britain — would need to rely on what they don’t have; top intel on the ground, not mere air strikes.
Which brings us back to Raqqa. The fake “Caliphate” capital is a key hub for all that oil smuggling. It also happens to be a potential hub for a future Pipelineistan gambit – be it the Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline or its competitor from Qatar.
Make no mistake: both the US and France are very much focused on Raqqa. This “war” could be over in a few days if all those smugglers – who are in fact financing Daesh – were spotted and arrested (ground intel, again). Daesh’s money flow would be easily intercepted.
And guess who’s preventing this solution; Turkish intel, because for Ankara the prime obsession is “Assad must go”, not Daesh. There’s absolutely no way to defeat Daesh from above – as long as the usual suspects, especially Gulf petrodollar interests and Erdogan’s Ottomanism, continue to “support” it on the ground, directly, via endless subterfuges, or simply ignoring their operations.
The good news, as it stands, is that The Syrian Arab Army (SAA), covered by Russian air strikes, liberated Kuweyris airbase, not far from Aleppo, while Kurdish peshmerga, covered by US air strikes, liberated Sinjar in Iraq, west of Mosul. So Daesh will face a lot of trouble moving in and out between Mosul and Raqqa. That may signal the way towards Daesh start losing oilfields in northeast Syria.
For now, what’s certain is that when Daesh went on overdrive, no intel service seems to have seen it coming.
They attacked Russia via a Sinai spin-off, bringing down the Metrojet.
They attacked Lebanon, Shi’ites as a whole, Hezbollah – and indirectly, Iran – via the bombing in the Burj el-Barajneh Shi’ite neighborhood of Beirut. Symbolically, that was an attack against the “4+1” (Russia, Syria, Iran, Iraq, plus Hezbollah).
And they attacked NATO in the heart of Paris (Hollande’s “act of war” crucially implies an attack against all NATO members. Incredible as it may seem, “moderate rebel” facilitator Turkey included.)
The strategic benefit of opening a war on three fronts – and attacking both Russia and NATO virtually at the same time – is more than dubious. As much as Daesh is flush; profits extensively from extortion, widespread pillaging and oil smuggling; and is showered with cash by generous GCC-based “donors”, that’s a little bit over the top.
The Belgian connection
Back in Paris, my initial working hypothesis was immediately confirmed: French intel started focusing on a single cell of Syria returnees as the perpetrators, before the investigation expanded – by accident – towards the Belgian connection, and “three coordinated teams of gunmen”, according to the Paris prosecutor.
That happened courtesy of a parking ticket found in a VW Polo; it led French intel to Molenbeek, aka “Little Morocco” northwest of downtown Brussels, a notorious Syrian returnee hub, crammed with shady, clandestine Salafi and Salafi-jihadi cells. As it stands, at least seven people in the European-wide investigation dragnet have been arrested in Molenbeek, and that’s where the Polo was rented. In the years after 9/11, I used to joke with local friends and sources, when I was back from the Gulf and walked the area, that I felt like “home”.
Belgian intel knows all there is to know about this state of affairs. The problem is essentially they can’t do anything about it – even as Belgium exhibits the largest per capita ratio of jihadis from “Syraq”; according to official numbers, 494 jihadis have been identified, 272 are still in “Syraq”, 75 are presumed dead, 134 are back, and 13 are on their way to the Levant.
So imagine the French investigation juggernaut arriving in Belgium by accident. Talk about a major intra-European security/intel failure. What they had was at best a hunch about homegrown – returnee – jihadis up to something, including, alarmingly, munitions specialists able to come up with made in Europe suicide vests and foot soldiers able to smuggle Kalashnikovs bought in the Balkans for 300 euros, as Europol well knows.
These are Caliph Ibrahim’s European “army.” Young. Born and bred in the EU. Usually double nationality. Statistically “invisible.” Totally integrated locally; what first struck me in Paris is how the targets in the 10ème and 11ème were carefully chosen.
Their loyalty is to a virtual de-territorialized nation (if only Deleuze and Guattari were alive to conceptualize it); and in a remixed 21st version of Etienne de la Boétie’s 1576 classic Discourse on Voluntary Servitude, they are “born-again” Muslims, born and bred in the developed West, deranged by Wahhabi Salafi-jihadism, and choosing to become slaves of a hazy “command and control” entity that is the embodiment of barbarism.
They learn to use weapons, technology, camouflage, and communication techniques just to become slave “soldiers”– voluntarily submitted to servitude. The infernal mechanism is simple; once you’ve graduated as a Syrian returnee, you got your homegrown diploma, and you’re free to attack the – secular republic – that issued your passport.
As for the notion that this small invisible army is supported by millions, that’s nonsense. The majority of France’s near 5 million Muslims is actually secular, galaxies away from Salafi-jihadism.
