The U.S., British, Canadian and other Western military training of Ukrainian forces that include neo-Nazi gangsters from Ukraine and other parts of Europe and the NATO/CIA training support in Turkey and Jordan being provided to Islamist jihadis tied to the Islamic State, Al Nusra Front, and Al Qaeda represents the application of 4th generation warfare (4GW) and 5th generation warfare (5GW) tactics from the Pentagon’s and Central Intelligence Agency’s think tanks to the battlefield.
The use of 4GW/5GW primarily involves the use of what are known as «violent non-state actors» (VNSAs). In the case of Ukraine, these VNSAs have become, with the integration of neo-Nazi battalions into the regular Ukrainian army, «violent state-supported actors», or VSSAs.The concept of 4GW was first drawn up by a gang of Pentagon war college types in the late 1980s to describe a post-Cold War threat of insurgents like VNSAs in failed states. After honing the war concept of 4GW, the world now faces groups like ISIL and its various spin-offs which have nested in failed states like Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Libya — all thanks to U.S. military and intelligence intervention by Republican and Democratic U.S. administrations — and threaten regional and global stability.
The appointment of neo-Nazi Ukrainian militia leader Dmytro Yarosh to be an advisor to Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces Viktor Muzhenko and the integration of neo-Nazi militia gangsters into the Ukrainian army is a clear-cut example of VNSAs being transformed into VSSAs. This also represents a move by the CIA and NATO from 4GW to the much more dangerous 5GW, in which criminal syndicates, computer hackers, and state-supported terrorists play significant roles. Yarosh played a significant part in the «Euromaidan» uprising, which overthrew the elected Ukrainian government in a coup d’état in early 2014.
A similar situation exists with regard to the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), whose self-proclaimed «caliph,» Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has been seen in northern Syria in the company of neo-conservative politicians like John McCain and CIA liaison officers from the U.S. embassy in Ankara. In what bodes ill for global security, Yarosh, who has taken on cult leader status among his neo-Nazis, as well as a larger number of Ukrainian nationalists, particularly around Lvov, has allegedly teamed up with ISIL volunteers provided from the Syrian and Iraqi killing zones. Yarosh and Al-Baghdadi, a one-time prisoner of U.S. occupation forces, represent textbook VNSAs. Yarosh has become a VSSA while al-Baghdadi’s connections to Turkey’s «Millî İstihbarat Teşkilatı» (MIT) National Intelligence Organization and Saudi Arabia’s «Al Mukhabarat Al A’amah» General Intelligence Directorate indicate he, also, has phased into a VCSA from a VNSA.
Neo-Nazi and ISIL recruits are fighting for quasi-state entities that are heavily involved in international organized crime. Ukraine’s regime relies heavily on its support from oligarchs like Ukrainian and Israeli citizen Ihor Kolomoisky, who runs a virtual mafia in Ukraine and abroad. Islamic State irregulars swear allegiance to a caliphate that kidnaps for ransom, sells looted antiquities on the open market (sometimes in concert with Ukrainian-Israeli criminal syndicates), hack into computer systems and networks, and robs banks. Criminal syndicates and VNSAs/VSSAs live at the heart of 5GW. A few experts see 5GW as combining barbarism and guerrilla warfare. Certainly, under such a definition, the beheadings and other mass atrocities carried out by ISIL in Libya, Syria, and Iraq and the well-planned assassinations by state-supported gangsters of politicians and journalists in Ukraine who are critical of the Kiev regime fit the bill for 5GW.
An ISIL organization chart recovered from the battlefield in Iraq and published by «Der Spiegel» reveals that ISIL is set up as an intelligence service. That should come as no surprise when it is considered that among ISIL’s chief overlords are the security services of Saudi Arabia and Turkey, acting with more than mere «winks and nods» from the CIA, Britain’s MI-6, and Israel’s Mossad. ISIL is affiliated with the U.S.-trained and -supported “Free Syrian Army,” which largely consists of Al Nusra Front and “Al Qaeda” loyalists of ISIL. Saudi surrogates fighting Houthi rebels in Yemen have affiliated with «Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula» (AQAP) irregulars who have looted, with pleasure, from abandoned armories in Sana’a, Mukalla, Taiz, and Aden, U.S. arms provided to past Yemeni regimes. The AQAP storming of Mukalla in South Yemen also resulted in the freeing from prison of the self-proclaimed AQAP emir of Abyan province, Khaled Batarfi. Not only has al-Baghdadi gained another ally in Yemen but the Saudis have another jihadist leader to rely on to fight the Houthis.
The arming of AQAP with captured U.S. weapons in Yemen mirrors the capture by ISIL of U.S.-supplied arms from abandoned Iraqi army bases in the northern and western parts of Iraq. The U.S. has been more responsible for the Middle East becoming awash in small arms and other military weaponry than any other nation. However, by allowing groups like ISIL and AQAP to receive U.S. weapons, the Middle East has now entered full-blown 5GW.
It was recently revealed that when Syrian guerrillas «captured» NBC correspondent Richard Engel and his five-man crew in 2012, they were not being held by Shi’a loyalists of Syrian president Bashar al-Assad, as originally reported by NBC, but by the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army. Engel knowingly misreported the following after his release: “I think I have a very good idea of who they [the kidnappers] were. This was a group known as the Shabiha. This is a government militia. These are people who are loyal to President Bashar al-Assad. They are Shiite. They were talking openly about their loyalty to the government, openly expressing their Shia faith. They are trained by Iranian Revolutionary Guard. They are allied with Hezbollah.” Engel’s report was totally false but NBC News stood by it. Engel was also putting forth the Israeli propaganda line that Hezbollah and Iran were chiefly responsible for the Syrian civil war.
Had it not been for the U.S.- and NATO-led overthrow of Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi, Nigeria’s Boko Haram would not have been able to obtain the weaponry from jihadists who declared an emirate in eastern Libya. In fact, the Libyan and Nigerian jihadists later swore allegiance to the Islamic State headed up by al-Baghdadi. Nigeria’s President Goodluck Jonathan, who was roundly criticized for not doing enough to stem Boko Haram and was tossed out by Nigeria’s electorate as a result, nevertheless collected massive amounts of American military aid as a result of the Boko Haram «bogeyman.» Jonathan’s inaction has resulted in Boko Haram not only being a continuing threat to the new Nigerian government of Muhammadu Buhari but also the neighboring countries of Niger, Cameroon, and Chad. All this, of course, fits nicely into the U.S. Africa Command’s 5GW strategies for Africa, a continent which has become an important source for raw materials for the U.S. war machine.
With the Pentagon’s decision to arm neo-Nazi insurgents who have been integrated into the Ukrainian army, the U.S. and NATO military planners have now embarked on the dangerous road of 5GW. Today, VNSAs such as neo-Nazi gangs from Ukraine and other European countries and Islamist jihadis from around the globe who have joined the ranks of the Islamic State-aligned Syrian Al Nusra Front and other splinter groups have graduated from VNSAs to VSSAs. The «Obama Doctrine», which is partly based on intervention in the affairs of destabilized nations, has enabled the introduction of 5GW on the world stage.