Darini Rajasingham Senanayake

There have been several geopolitical developments in South Asia and the Indian Ocean region. These include United States Vice President J.D Vance’s visit with his Indian origin wife, Usha and their children to India in April and the staging of terror attacks on tourists in Kashmir’s Pahalgam, which were instantly blamed on Pakistan. The same week there was a huge blast in Iran’s port Bandar Abbas on the Persian Gulf that opens into the Indian Ocean.

Earlier in the month there were reports of the return of the United States Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), operatives to the Bangram Air Base in Afghanistan. This was reportedly in consultation with erstwhile proxy, the Taliban.

President Trump had stated that former President Biden made a mistake abandoning Bangram Base during the US withdrawal from Afghanistan given its infrastructure investments and proximity to China’s missile sites, not to mention Russia.

The Easter week attacks in Kashmir were similar to those of the Easter Sunday attacks in 2019 in Sri Lanka, mysteriously claimed by Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS). These also targeted tourists, as well as, churches and a Chinese research mission in the Seas of Sri Lanka– in a Hybrid operation.

 Following, the attacks in Kashmir which killed 26 people, the global corporate media propaganda machine echoed the moment of America’s Global War on Terror”.

BlackRock partner, India’s Adani owned NDTV was full of India’s War on Terror” moment, echoing rhetoric after the 9/11 World Trade Center attacks; cheerleading a hard military response and possible war with Pakistan. This would of course destabilize South Asia, one of the world’s most impoverished regions, despite the Indian growth story economic hype. A war between the nuclear armed neighbors would moreover further weaponize religious diaspora networks and destabilize historically multi-religious South Asia.

What of India’s Push to be a Peace-Maker drawing on Spiritual Traditions?

Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s recent push to be a global peace-maker in the Russia-Ukraine war, leveraging India’s spiritual traditions of Ahimsa (non-violence) in the Buddhist, Jain and Hindu Yogic and Ghandian legacies, appeared forgotten. Rather, there was rush to deliver collective punishment to Pakistan’s farmers by withholding Indus Valley Waters, affecting food security, by putting on hold the treaty for sharing of water resources. India and Pakistan were in any case a single country until the retreating British Raj Partitioned India in 1947, as it did Cyprus, Ireland, Palestine and other places as part of its Exit Strategy. Was this in order to retain British imperial and corporate economic and security interests, a different kind of GLADIO-style stay behind operation in the Jewel of the Crown” of a lost Empire?

Perhaps the most troubling aspect of the Indian State’s response to the attack in Pahalgam has been the metering out of collective punishment in lieu of a measured, calibrated and targeted response. In addition to holding in abeyance the Indus Water treaty there has been a destruction of the homes of purported terrorists for the collective punishment of their kin. Is India drawn into the I2U2 mimicking the Israeli barbarism of collective punishment in the occupied Palestine’s West Bank and Gaza Strip and forgetting Ahimsa?

Diaspora Wags the Dog”: Weaponizing Religion for a new Cold War

The no doubt heinous false flag attacks on tourists in Pahalgam were clearly staged to elicit an over-reaction from the Modi regime and lock the two neighbours into a downward spiral, and de-stabilize the South Asian region. There was an out pouring of sympathy from Western capitals to support India’s ‘war on terror’ and promote ‘intelligence sharing’ and arms sales.

It is now clear that Indian Diaspora groups in North America are being harnessed to wag the dog” so to speak and lure India into the US military business industrial complex and NATO War Machine. This, along with the QUAD (the collective of Australia, Japan USA, India) and I2U2 (the collective of Israel, India, United Arab Emirates and USA), in the Western Indian Ocean, set up to target China.

Although the Indian Ocean was declared a Zone of Peace on the initiative of the third world at the United Nations in 1971 at the height of the first Cold War it has become highly militarized. Nuclear armed US planes were recently sent to the Diego Garcia military base.

Bringing India into America’s new Cold War on China would also break the BRICS and Global South unity, perceived as a threat to the hegemony of the US dollar and the existing global trade and financial system.

Working with the Indian Diaspora in North America to draw India seems to be a bi-partisan agreement for Washington’s Republican and Democrat Uni-party.

Was the visit of US Vice President J.D. Vance with his Indian origin wife and children dressed in Desi garb just days before the Kashmir, Pahalgam attacks a coincidence?  Tulsi Gabbard, head of US National Security Agency is a Hindu as is Kash Patel who is the head of the FBI. Kamala Harris the Former Vice President, and Presidential hopeful also had some South Indian roots.

Is the Indian diaspora being used to draw Mother India which had stood with Palestine during the hey days of Non-Alignment, to partner with Zionist Israel, which ironically, also works with Saudi Arabian Petrodollars to promote the Muslim Fundamentalist (Muslim Zionist?) Wahabi- Salafi- Islamist –ISIS, ISIL, Al Qaida, Al Nusra, Boko Haram, Al Shabab, Tariq Islam, Towheed Jamat, Lashkar-e-Taiba, their off-shoots and Islamist terror networks around the world?

Fighting ‘God-less Communists’ and Independence Movements with Religion

Claiming to fight God-less Communists” during the Cold War against the Soviet Union the United States and its European allies weaponized religion, seen as a conservative force in the Third World. This to buffer against de-colonization and national Independence movements sweeping across Asia and Africa after the end of World War 2. National Independence and liberation movements were often Communist or Socialist in nature.

Simultaneously, ethno-religious proxy wars were promoted to deflect full independence for colonized peoples, and retain the economic and security interests of retreating European empires, or transfer them to the rising American empire. This was clearly evident in the so-called ethic conflict” in geostrategic Sri Lanka.

All ‘world religions’ are politically constituted and hence more or less weaponized. Islam is by far the Most Weaponized religion on the planet. That is, excepting Southeast Asian Islam, which is softer and culturally diverse, given proximity to polytheistic Buddhist and Hindu cultural traditions. This is demonstrated in the Indonesian State’s Constitutional commitment to Pancha Sila.

During the Cold War, Muslim networks were used at the handmaiden and cat’s paw of the Evangelical Christian Zionist empire to stage violence and destabilize multi-religious countries in Asia and Africa. There was also a concerted attempt to weaponize Buddhism as documented in an excellent book Cold War Monks: Buddhism and America’s Secret Strategy in Southeast Asia”, albeit with less than spectacular results.

As academics like Dianne Kirby have shown, in Cold War USA, evangelical Christian and the Jewish diaspora networks, particularly, Zionism and the Chabad movement helped fund and underwrite settler colonialism in Palestine. Simultaneously, Muslims were used as the handmaiden and cat’s paw to stage violence in the interest of the US Empire and Israel around the world, with the support of Evangelical Christian Zionist groups. This included the radicalization of minority Muslim Chechens in Russia and the Uyghurs in China.

There is of course a long tradition of Israeli security agencies, Shin Bet and MOSSAD working to weaponized religions in Palestine in order to promote settler colonialism. The Arab dominated Middle East and North Africa (MENA region) is the most violent place on the planet. At this time, there appears to be a staging of the long promised Biblical End times prophesy in Palestine, a blood soaked passion play replete with famine, disease and fire for Evangelical Christian Zionists and the return of the (anti)Christ? Or, is it just the End Times of an Empire?

The Head of the Snake of Islamist Terror and the US Military Business Industrial Complex

The head of the snake of Islamist Terror around the world was Saudi Arabia that during the Cold War spread Wahabi-Salafi fundamentalist Islam in cooperation with the CIA and Mossad also targeting Persian/ Iranian Shia Islam which had a more spiritual orientation. The Ayatollahs in Teheran had after all thrown out the US-backed Shah of Iran and nationalized its oil wells.

Saudi Arabia’s pole position in Islam as the county of the holy site of Mecca, the birthplace of the Prophet, and its Petrodollars enabled the spread of Wahabi-Salafi fundamentalist Islam throughout the Muslim world. This was in exchange for regime protection for the house of Saud. The US has massive bases in the Kingdom.

Of course NATO’s Turkey and other neighbors of Palestine which are complicit in the on-going genocide there, along with the UAE, Qatar, Egypt etc. helped. Some were subject to blowback from the Muslim Brotherhood.

Once the Soviet Union, Red Peril and the Cold War ended in 1991, Islamist Terror became America’s official new enemy. The’ Global war on terror” after the World Trade Center attacks were staged purportedly by Osama bin Laden’s Al Qaida enabled perpetuating the US military business industrial complex with a new Islamist enemy.

It is worth recalling here that President Dwight Eisenhower had warned the American people about the threat posed by the US military business industrial complex in his farewell address to the nation. And sure enough, President John F. Kennedy who wanted to draw down the US war machine in Vietnam was assassinated a couple of years later in 1963 reportedly in an internal covert operation.

The covert links between Zionist-Evangelical Christianity and Islamist Wahabi groups that go back to the Cold War weaponization of Islam also to fight Russia in Afghanistan may partly explain why the Arab dominated Middle East and North Africa (MENA Region), is the most violent part of world at this time.  Muslim communities and networks around the world were weaponized and used for terror while, others turned a blind eye, to on-going radicalization particularly via the internet, social media and On-line religiosity. As Yasha Levine has detailed in his book, the Internet was a military invention for surveillance and control rather than to promote Democracy.[i]

---

[i] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L1US6sxgKrc