US-made al-Qaeda biggest threat to US

By Hamid Reza Emadi

For most Americans, aliens are no longer the biggest threat. It's al-Qaeda with its destructive power that can do enormous harm to their land. And guess what, this time the enemy hasn't come from some far off land.

Most experts believe al-Qaeda was established by the US itself. Ironically, America created its own top enemy.

Ayman al Zawahiri

The United States founded the al-Qaeda organization back in the 1980s to expel the Russians from Afghanistan. Just over a decade later, the US attacked Afghanistan to fight the same group. It accused al-Qaeda of masterminding 9/11.

Come 2012, and the love-hate relationship between the US and al-Qaeda plays out again. This time the venue is Syria. Thousands of al-Qaeda operatives from Saudi Arabia, Libya, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Lebanon, Iraq, Somalia and even Chechnya have poured into Syria to fight the government. Either doing it for money or for ideological reasons, the foreign militants fighting in Syria show relentless resolve. They put themselves in harm’s way facing one of the world’s toughest militaries.

The militants kill indiscriminately, just as they do in Iraq and Afghanistan, and just as they do in Pakistan, Somalia and so many other places.

For a long time, the world has been fearful of their actions and pictures of their horrific crimes have been cover stories around the world. But when it comes to Syria, those same terrorists somehow turn into freedom-fighters, and while their threat to world security resonates globally as extremely alarming, it appears to have fallen on deaf ears in Washington and some other Western capitals that simply want President Assad out--at any cost.

The US, Britain, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey form the mainstream media's international community vis-a-vis the question of Syria. This small ‘international community’ has so far failed to convince the rest of the world that Syria is an imminent threat that has to be taken out. However, it is equally true that Damascus, too, has made mistakes. It sent its armed-to-the-teeth troops to confront peaceful protesters. One intelligence source told me that the Syrian army did not have one single teargas canister when the unrest began. Troops used live rounds to disperse the demonstrators. But things turned even uglier after foreign hands started to appear in the conflict, with major bombings and assassinations heralding an era of violence and insecurity in a country that many say is paying the price for its anti-Israeli policies.

It’s now an open secret that Syria’s logistical support drove Lebanon's Hezbollah to victory over Israel in their infamous 2006 war.

But, why would al-Qaeda want to help Israel take revenge from Syria? Why has al-Qaeda never attacked Israel? Why was al-Qaeda allowed to recruit insurgents in Libya, and Syria? And, was al-Qaeda destroyed in Afghanistan years back or does it still exist as an organization? These are just some of the many questions for history to answer. But for now, one thing is for sure -- the backers of those misguided, morally-impaired individuals called al-Qaeda operatives are simply nurturing an army of die-hard enemy combatants that will eventually strike back at the heart their current supporters at the time of their choosing.