Loved this opinion piece.
How can ISIS or any other terror group or terrorism can be wiped out by the same forces who helped flourish it in the first place? The Western countries have a habit of supporting a set of proxy fighters as long as those fighters help achieve the Western countries its objectives. As soon as those objectives are achieved, those proxy fighters or mercenaries are labelled "terrorists" & the West wants them to be eliminated asap. That may looks easy & good in Hollywood movies, but doesn't work in real life. As the author very nicely says that "terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – & allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call."
For instance, militant arm of the Kurdish party in Turkey, PKK, was labelled a terrorist group, for years, by US, UK, & their allies. Well, now, they are all supporting PKK because they are using them against ISIS.
Even the West wanted ISIS in Iraq & Syria. They wanted a Sunni group, which they can control, & which will keep Shiite Bashar Assad & its Shiite allies, Hezbollah & Iran, in check. But, when ISIS start slitting throats of westerners, they become a "terrorist" group, which needs to be bombed out of existence now.
The author very nicely ends the piece with "endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction & division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus."
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The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. ... the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.
The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.
That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour & military vehicles), but training, logistical support & the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.
Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers & their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence ... for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US & British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion & occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.
But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – & allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.
For the past year, US, British & other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi & Syrian territory & proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.
...
Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, & claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war & risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.
A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – & effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria & an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria & Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) & fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – & states that “western countries, the Gulf states & Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.
Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq & Iran)”.
Which is pretty well exactly what happened 2 years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted & there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US & its allies weren’t only supporting & arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.
That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US & Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.
The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners & posting atrocities online, & the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US & western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.
It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the NATO-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.
In reality, US & western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, & mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq & Syria fit such an approach perfectly.
What’s clear is that Isis & its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq & Syria in the first place, or whose open & covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction & division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.
How can ISIS or any other terror group or terrorism can be wiped out by the same forces who helped flourish it in the first place? The Western countries have a habit of supporting a set of proxy fighters as long as those fighters help achieve the Western countries its objectives. As soon as those objectives are achieved, those proxy fighters or mercenaries are labelled "terrorists" & the West wants them to be eliminated asap. That may looks easy & good in Hollywood movies, but doesn't work in real life. As the author very nicely says that "terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – & allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call."
For instance, militant arm of the Kurdish party in Turkey, PKK, was labelled a terrorist group, for years, by US, UK, & their allies. Well, now, they are all supporting PKK because they are using them against ISIS.
Even the West wanted ISIS in Iraq & Syria. They wanted a Sunni group, which they can control, & which will keep Shiite Bashar Assad & its Shiite allies, Hezbollah & Iran, in check. But, when ISIS start slitting throats of westerners, they become a "terrorist" group, which needs to be bombed out of existence now.
The author very nicely ends the piece with "endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction & division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus."
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. ... the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting.
The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead with the trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition.
That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour & military vehicles), but training, logistical support & the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime.
Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers & their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence ... for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US & British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion & occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.
But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – & allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.
For the past year, US, British & other western forces have been back in Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group Islamic State (formerly known as al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi & Syrian territory & proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.
...
Some Iraqis complain that the US sat on its hands while all this was going on. The Americans insist they are trying to avoid civilian casualties, & claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don’t want to be seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war & risk upsetting their Sunni allies in the Gulf.
A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – & effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria & an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria & Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) & fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – & states that “western countries, the Gulf states & Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria.
Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq & Iran)”.
Which is pretty well exactly what happened 2 years later. The report isn’t a policy document. It’s heavily redacted & there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US & its allies weren’t only supporting & arming an opposition they knew to be dominated by extreme sectarian groups; they were prepared to countenance the creation of some sort of “Islamic state” – despite the “grave danger” to Iraq’s unity – as a Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.
That doesn’t mean the US created Isis, of course, though some of its Gulf allies certainly played a role in it – as the US vice-president, Joe Biden, acknowledged last year. But there was no al-Qaida in Iraq until the US & Britain invaded. And the US has certainly exploited the existence of Isis against other forces in the region as part of a wider drive to maintain western control.
The calculus changed when Isis started beheading westerners & posting atrocities online, & the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US & western habit of playing with jihadi groups, which then come back to bite them, goes back at least to the 1980s war against the Soviet Union in Afghanistan, which fostered the original al-Qaida under CIA tutelage.
It was recalibrated during the occupation of Iraq, when US forces led by General Petraeus sponsored an El Salvador-style dirty war of sectarian death squads to weaken the Iraqi resistance. And it was reprised in 2011 in the NATO-orchestrated war in Libya, where Isis last week took control of Gaddafi’s home town of Sirte.
In reality, US & western policy in the conflagration that is now the Middle East is in the classic mould of imperial divide-and-rule. American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria, & mount what are effectively joint military operations with Iran against Isis in Iraq while supporting Saudi Arabia’s military campaign against Iranian-backed Houthi forces in Yemen. However confused US policy may often be, a weak, partitioned Iraq & Syria fit such an approach perfectly.
What’s clear is that Isis & its monstrosities won’t be defeated by the same powers that brought it to Iraq & Syria in the first place, or whose open & covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only destruction & division. It’s the people of the region who can cure this disease – not those who incubated the virus.
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