US trained Uighur terrorists

Following are two partial transcriptions of interviews with Eric Margolis (EM)and Scott Horton (SH).

The first is from November 08, available here.

EM: In fact, you know, when the US invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they claimed that there were over twenty 'terrorist training camps' as they called them, they were all training terrorists to go and attack America. Well, this is an absolute lie. One among many.

Most of the training camps, 90% of the people in the training camps were either Kashmiris being trained by Pakistani Intelligence Service, the ISI, with full American knowledge, to go an fight in Kashmir against Indian rule. That was the biggest group, and the second biggest group were people from Central Asia, mainly Uzbekistan and Khazakistan and Tajikistan who were being organized and trained to go and fight these dreadful communist regimes of Central Asia, again with full American knowledge.

And finally there were a group of Uighurs - Chinese muslims from Xinjiang province in Western China who were being trained by Bin Laden to go and fight the communist Chinese in Xinjiang, and this was not only with the knowledge, but with the support of the CIA, because they thought they might use them if war ever broke out with China.

SH: As late as when?

EM: Oh, this is in 2001.

SH: In 2001, with CIA backing, Bin Laden himself, not just ISI-types or whatever, but actually Al-Qaeda, was working with the CIA and training these anti-Chinese Muslims?

EM: Well, I wouldn't go that far. I would say that they knew what Bin Laden was doing, and they were encouraging him through third parties, probably the Saudis, but the minute 9/11 happened... well, you remember Washington was giving money to the Taliban until four months before 9/11. The reason for that was they thought they would enlist the Taliban to go and overthrow the Central Asian communist regimes, and even attack China. But of course when 9/11 happened, this dirty little secret was covered up, the files were burned, and anybody involved in it was sent off to purgatory.

SH: Yeah, I think there was even a plot, somewhere in 2000 or something by the British to use Bin Laden types to overthrow Gaddafi in Libya.

EM: That's exactly right, and in fact the British used them to shoot off a bomb in Tripoli that killed about eighty civilians, so there are a lot of dirty hands there. The point is that Afghanistan was not a hotbed of terrorism, these were commando groups, guerrilla groups, being trained for specific purposes in Central Asia.

This April 09 interview is available here

SH: I'd like to ask you if you could expand on something that you've mentioned on this show before, which is that the Americans - I don't know, the military or the CIA or both or what - during maybe the late part of the Clinton term, early part of the Bush term, were either turning a blind eye, or were actually helping the Uighurs, the Chinese Islamic dissidents, that were training in the camps in Afghanistan, and going back to China.

They're famous now because some of them are being held in Guantanamo Bay, and won't be released even though there are no charges against them and what have you. But, here again, was America backing jihadists apparently against the Chinese.

EM: Well, yes. That illustrates Henry Kissinger's bon mot that the only thing more dangerous than being America's enemy is being an ally, because these people were paid by the CIA, they were armed by the US, these Chinese muslims from Xinjiang, the most-Western province.

The CIA was going to use them in the event of a war with China, or just to raise hell there, and they were trained and supported out of Afghanistan, some of them with Osama bin Laden's collaboration. The Americans were up to their ears with this.