DISINFO: The US created the terrorists who killed two Spanish journalists in Africa
SUMMARY
Terrorists murdered two Spanish journalists in Burkina Faso, and we all know very well who created those jihadists. It was the US, a consequence of its support for Islamic fundamentalists in the war in Afghanistan in the previous century.
RESPONSE
Recurring pro-Kremlin disinformation narrative about the West’s alleged support for terrorism.
Spanish journalists David Beriain and Roberto Fraile and Irish environmentalist Rory Young were kidnapped and executed after a highly coordinated ambush in Burkina Faso on April 27, 2021. While Spanish intelligence services suspect that it was carried out by one of the several jihadist groups operating in the area, and the Al Qaeda-linked organisation Jama'at Nasr al-Islam wal Muslimin (JNIM) claimed responsibility for it, the identity of the authors remains unverified, and Spanish authorities have called for a full investigation of the incident. Therefore, accusing the US of "creating the group that murdered these journalists" is a deliberate distortion of facts.
There is some discussion about the degree of the US indirect responsibility or collateral effect in the past promotion of Islamic extremism due to its support of Afghan rebel groups against the Soviet invasion in the 1980s. A recurrent narrative in some Western circles affirms that this support as a side effect led to the creation of Al Qaeda, though most specialists on the subject, such as US authors Steve Coll and Peter Bergen or Afghan journalist Emran Feroz, concluded that the so-called Afghan-Arab fighters -who later became the founding pillar of Al Qaeda- didn’t receive any direct US support. They may have benefited from indirect US aid through the Pakistani and Saudi intelligence services, though this is very different from claiming that the US “created Al Qaeda”.
Pro-Kremlin disinformation has taken this narrative a step further, promoting the baseless conspiracy theory that the United States established many terrorist organizations and that it has full control over global terrorism. Given that the US has also backed opposition armed groups in Syria, all of which are labelled as “terrorists” by both the Syrian regime of Bashar Al Assad and Russia, this disinformation message aims to blur any distinction among all those groups in order to portray the US as a “supporter of terrorists”.
See other examples in our database, such as claims that the West encouraged the creation of the Islamic State, who are its mercenaries; that the West is supporting terrorists to encircle Russia; that the EU is supporting terrorism against the Syrian state; that instead of killing ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al Baghdadi, the US may have evacuated him; that the US is transporting ISIS members to Afghanistan; or that extremists and Nazis are being trained in Ukraine to act in Belarus.