Americans must be made aware of Saakashvili’s extending refuge to jihadists responsible for countless acts of terror in southern Russia and his regime’s extraordinary coordination efforts to permit them to step up attacks in the Caucasus region.
Specifically, according to reliable sources [with lines to two foreign intel services], in December 2009 a secret meeting took place in Tbilisi, the Georgian capital, with representatives of numerous jihad groups based in various Islamic and European countries for the purpose of coordinating their activities on Russia’s southern flank. The meeting was organized under the auspices of high officials of the Georgian government; while Saakashvili himself was not present, officials of his ministry of internal affairs (allegedly G. Lordkipanidze) and others acted as hosts and coordinators. Georgian Ambassador to Kuwait Mayering-Mikadze purportedly facilitated travel for participants from the Middle East. In addition to “military” operations (i.e., attacks in southern Russia) special attention was given to ideological warfare, for example, the launching of the Russian-language TV station “First Caucasian.”
Are we to believe that U.S. intelligence agencies were unaware of this meeting and other similar actions? The question then is unavoidable: has Washington decided to turn a blind eye — or even worse, to encourage our “ally” Saakashvili to play the “jihad card” against Russia? Could such a thing be possible at a time when the world’s media are filled with reports of jihad attacks in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, India, Israel, Philippines, and other countries — not least the United States (Fort Hood, Fort Dix)? The threat comes from the same ideology that motivated the 9/11 attacks against our country and which seeks to create through violence a worldwide Islamic caliphate governed by Sharia law.
Every day American troops fight jihadists in Afghanistan, where prospects for cooperation between NATO and Russia are increasingly promising. But many in the West prefer to look the other way regarding attacks against Russia, or when an unstable politician masquerading as a Georgian reincarnation of Thomas Jefferson offers his country’s territory as a terrorist base.
We should have learned this lesson a long time ago. During the 1980s, American support for Afghan mujahidin fighting the Soviets seemed to make sense — but it eventually gave us Islamic “scholars” known as Taliban and the al-Qaeda group headed by one of our most adept proteges, Osama bin Laden. The 9/11 Commission Report is replete with references to U.S.-supported jihadist activity in the Balkans in the 1990s, allowing al-Qaeda to emerge from its birthplace in the Hindu Kush and morph into a global force capable of striking the American homeland. Will we now, having learned nothing, repeat the same mistake in the Caucasus — at the cost of scuttling improved ties with the world’s second most powerful country, which faces one and the same enemy we do?
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