Flag of the Islamic State
Abstract
This essay puts the present focus on the crisis in Iraq caused by the ISIS insurgency in the context of the historical and contemporary forces that have shaped and are still shaping the conflict in Iraq and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
This essay puts the present focus on the crisis in Iraq caused by the ISIS insurgency in the context of the historical and contemporary forces that have shaped and are still shaping the conflict in Iraq and the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region.
It falls in line with a policy overseen by the United States which is predicated on the re-drawing of the Middle Eastern map i.e. balkanization and of ‘managing’ a series of manufactured conflicts which are ultimately designed to protect America’s access to the natural resources of the region.
This overarching policy accommodates a confluence of interests that cater to the hegemonic aspirations of the state of Israel, Saudi Arabia & the Sunni Gulf States and Turkey. It pits the United States and these allies against the Shia Crescent led by Iran whose allies are Syria and Hezbollah in Lebanon.
Two key points contended here are:
1.The present crisis derives from the decision to overthrow the regime of Saddam Hussein on a false premise and that the overriding motivation of the influential neo-conservative group within the Bush administration was to destroy Iraq to benefit the state of Israel.
2.The present crisis is an extension of the war against the Syrian government of Bashar Assad which was manufactured by outside powers for the following ends:
- To destroy a government with an anti-Israel stance.
- To replace the minority Alawite government of Assad with a Sunni one which would comply with Saudi, Qatari and Turkish plans to build a natural gas pipeline from the Gulf to Turkey which would supply Europe with natural gas.
- Destroying Alawite power in Syria would weaken Iran (and break its link with Hezbollah in Lebanon); the Iranians being the current existential threat to the Israeli state that Saddam and Nasser once were. The Shi’ite Iranians are the chief competitors of the Sunni Saudis for influence in the Middle East and of course the Iranians do not follow the dictates of Washington.
Evidence is provided of Israel’s historical and continuing motivation to break up Arab states and to stimulate turmoil via the policies of David Ben-Gurion and successive Israeli leaders as well as by reference to policy papers such as the ‘Yinon Plan’(1982) and the ‘Clean Break Document' (1996).
Evidence is provided of the United States' motive in fomenting sectarian conflicts and supporting extreme Islamic groups as has occurred in Libya, Syria and Iraq. It is based on maintaining American economic and military hegemony and is outlined in a policy paper funded by the US Army and produced by the RAND Corporation entitled ‘Unfolding the Future of the Long War: Motivations, Prospects and Implications for the U.S. Army’ (2008).
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The
declaration on 29th June, the first day of the holy month of
Ramadan, of an Islamic Caliphate by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of
al-Dawlah Al-Islamiyah fi al-Iraq wa-al-Sham –the jihadist organisation known
also as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) - marks a watershed of sorts
since the commencement of what used to be commonly termed as the ‘Clash of
Civilizations’.
For
in the post-Cold War era, even before the ‘catalyzing event’ that was September
the 11th of 2001, the avowed goal of the Osama Bin Laden-led
al-Qaeda movement was to create a Sunni-led Caliphate.
It
has been the dream not only of the Islamic zealot but also, perhaps, the latent
hope of many ordinary Muslims to have a unity of Mohammedans in a political
state on a scale at least equalling those which existed in succeeding epochs during
what may be referred to as the golden age of Islamic civilization.
At
the helm of such an entity would be a caliph who would command a global empire
of the Ummah or believers stretching
from the western part of North Africa and even the Iberian Peninsula through
the Middle East and south Asia and on to the Indonesian archipelago.
To
many Jihadists, the re-creation of the borders of previous Caliphates such as
those presided over by the Rashiduns, Umayyads, Abbasids, Fatimids and Ottomans
would be an unambitious delimitation of what they feel should ideally cover all
areas of the globe.
The
ever changing name of the organisation first known the Islamic State in Iraq
then as the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria or the Levant and as of August 2014
simply the Islamic State has seemingly reflected its geographic aspirations and
its latest perhaps reflective of its resolve to escape the limitation to
identifiable, colonially national imposed borders.
Certainly,
the historical record of the Caliphate is redolent of an irresistible need to
expand as far as possible by means of conquest. It was, for instance, the goal
of the Sokoto Caliphate located in modern Nigeria and extending to a vast range
of West Africa to expand the frontiers of Islam further south in order, the
euphemism went, for its warriors to ‘dip’ the Holy Koran into the waters of the
Atlantic Ocean.
The
June rampage of ISIS in a murderous Blitzkrieg
starting from the eastern borders of strife-ridden Syria through the
northern part of Iraq caught the attention of the world. Amid stories of Iraqi
army commanders apparently deserting their posts, cities such as Tikrit,
Fallujah and Mosul fell.
These
startling events along with evidence of wanton violence perpetrated against
civilian populations saw media outlets reflect the American government’s
projection of the insurgents as an extreme species of Islamic fanaticism
surpassing even that of al-Qaeda which had to be stopped at all costs.
Such
‘cost’, it was claimed, would even countenance an alliance of sorts with the
Iranian state, the arch-enemy consigned to the infamous status of an ‘Axis of
Evil’ nation and presently subjected to the most punitive measures of economic
sanctions mounted against any nation-state in recent years.
The
crisis of ISIS is, of course, not an isolated, self-incubated phenomenon but
rather is the latest instalment in a chain of events that goes back to the
decision of the United States to invade Iraq in 2003 in order to effect the
removal of the regime headed by Saddam Hussein.
It
is also an episode which on closer examination may bear the hallmarks of
precise direction and manipulation by foreign powers. It appeared deeply
suspicious to some who noted the speed by which the Iraqi army’s resistance to
ISIS penetration crumbled.
How
could an army with vastly superior numbers and equipment be overrun so quickly?
Why did the commanders in Mosul and Tikrit reportedly desert their posts and
instruct soldiers to leave?
The
implication is that they may have been bribed to do so. Of this proposition, no
concrete evidence has materialised, although the alternative proposition, that
a lack of professionalism and cohesion within a dysfunctional army that is the
product of a dysfunctional state suddenly confronted by hordes of battle-hardened
and ideologically motivated fanatics is a compelling one.
Many
Shia soldiers are reportedly unwilling to fight for the Iraqi state.
Still,
there are some analysts who believe that it is a situation which has been
manufactured with the specific aim of applying pressure on the Iraqi government
led by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki and that it has a medium-term endeavour of
reversing the fast dissipating fortunes of the intervention which deliberately
fomented a war within the borders of Syria which itself is part of a longer-term
objective of redrawing the borders of the Middle East.
The
instability that has in recent times befallen Iraq and Syria and which at any
time could conceivably combust into a full-blown regional war represents a
confluence of interests; a merger in fact of the imperial designs of Saudi
Arabia, Turkey and Israel.
It
is a state of affairs underpinned by the active collaboration of the United
States but finds resistance from counter-measures employed by the Islamic
Republic of Iran which seeks to preserve the ‘Shia Crescent’ which extends from
the Persian Gulf to the eastern Mediterranean.
The
Kingdom of Saudi Arabia which serves as the custodian of the sacred relics of
Islam is concerned with asserting Sunni hegemony throughout the region while
the Zionist state of Israel has consistently fostered an agenda of
balkanisation as a guarantee of its survival.
The
motivations of Turkey under the ‘soft-Islamist’ government of Prime Minister
Recep Erdogan, ostensibly, are less clear-cut given Turkey’s longstanding ‘Zero
Problems with Neighbours’ policy. Not least are the implications of what a
large-scale amendment to the borders of the region could have on Kurdish
nationalist aspirations.
Nonetheless,
if the frequently bandied descriptions of Turkish neo-Ottoman pretensions sound
banal and analytically lazy, the projection of Turkish influence in the region
is clearly at the heart of Erdogan’s recalibrations in his relations with both
Syria and Iraq.
The
United States for its part has largely been concerned with overthrowing regimes
which do not toe the line; those of Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muamar Gaddafi
being the prime examples along with the attempt to unseat Bashar Assad in
Syria.
While
a general impression of disengagement from the region is being given by the
policies of the Obama administration which has overseen the withdrawal of
combat forces from Iraq and Afghanistan, the overall direction and underpinning
rationale of United States policy is to continue the decades-long intrigues
which have been geared towards weakening the power of Iran; and if possible, to
effect the overthrow of the Islamic system of government which has been in
place since the abdication of the US-backed Shah in 1979.
Notwithstanding
the rapprochement of sorts which has followed the change of leadership and that
is primarily evidenced by the continuing talks over its nuclear developing capacity,
the sanctions against that country remain as draconian as ever.
Further,
the recent announcement by the Obama administration of plans to go to Congress
to raise monies for the anti-Assad opposition, confirm the on-going stratagem of
attempting to permanently cut off the supply routes from Iran to Hezbollah in
Lebanon.
The
demarcation between ‘friendly’ and ‘hostile’ nations in the Middle Eastern and
North African world is long established regardless of administration, although
the most overt expression given to a long term plan remains the document, Rebuilding America's Defenses issued by the neo-Conservative Project for the New American Century (PNAC)
in 2000.
This
called for the systematic overthrow of a select number of regimes adjudged to
be hostile to the “interests and values” of the United States.
The
removal of Saddam Hussein in Iraq formed the initial phase and this was to be
followed by countries including Sudan, Libya and Syria, with Iran serving as
the finale.
While
the neo-Conservative influence on the administration of George W. Bush favoured
intervention using the direct resources of the United States military, the
present administration favours the path of effecting destabilisation through a
technique of supporting a cast of dissidents involved in the prosecution of asymmetric
warfare.
These
belligerents ironically have tended to consist of Sunni extremists cut out of
the same cloth as al-Qaeda; of which ISIS is.
Is
ISIS the latest actor on a stage involving militarized Islamist groups who have
done the bidding of the United States; effectively functioning as what has been
cynically termed a foreign legion of America?
There
is evidence pointing to the answer being firmly in the affirmative.
As
is well documented, the United States through its Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)
supported the Mujahedin during its guerrilla campaign against the forces of the
Soviet Union when they occupied Afghanistan.
Prior
to this, the United States had developed a complex but enduring relationship
with the Muslim Brotherhood which dated back to the 1950s during the
Eisenhower-era. The aim was largely to influence the brotherhood in the context
of containing the spread of communism.
Among
the band of kindred Islamists waging the anti-Soviet insurgency with huge
inputs of United States funding and training was Osama Bin Laden who of course
later formed al-Qaeda.
The
protestations by official CIA historians that aid was only directed at
indigenous Afghan insurgents is reminiscent of the disingenuous distinction
postulated in the present Syrian crisis between so-called ‘moderate’ and
‘extremist’ elements of the militias opposing Bashar Assad.
In
any case, both native Afghan and foreign fighters shared the same Islamist
sentiments. While they were fighting for nationalistic reasons as well as for Islamic
aims which were to remove the foreign and ‘atheist’ invader from Afghan soil,
they were also unknowingly fighting to fulfil an American foreign policy
agenda; namely that of weakening the Cold War-era Soviet foe.
The
attack of September 11th 2001 to which responsibility was affixed on
Bin Laden’s group has not precluded a resumption of similar mutually beneficial
relationships.
A “re-configuration” of American foreign
policy priorities according to the Pulitzer award winning writer Seymour Hirsch
occurred about five years later during the second tenure of the administration
of President George W. Bush. This involved aiding pro-Saudi Sunni militants in
the Lebanon against the Iranian supported Shia militia group, Hezbollah.
With
the dawning of the so-called ‘Arab Spring’, protests against the regime of
Muamar Gaddafi transmogrified into a full blown insurrection in the city of
Benghazi from where militant Islamists including the Libyan Islamic Fighting
Group emerged to fight pitched battles against Gaddafi’s forces until he was
overthrown.
This
would not have been possible but for the use of NATO’s airpower as well as the
logistical and instructional help such as that provided by the special forces
of the United Kingdom.
The
United States aided by its NATO allies were again involved in fomenting a
military opposition against Bashar Assad’s government in Syria. And as
confirmed in June of 2013 by the former foreign minister of France, Roland
Dumas, this intervention was conceived and prepared for at least two years in
advance of the commencement of the insurgency which developed a few months
after what appeared to be genuine protests occurred in cities such as Damascus
and Aleppo.
The
rebels were given staging posts in the US-allied surrounding nations of Turkey
and Jordan to serve as training quarters and to mount raids.
And
as reported by both the UK Daily
Telegraph and the New York Times
in March of last year, a large cache of arms and equipment was airlifted to the
rebels in a transaction co-ordinated by the CIA and paid for by the Saudis.
But
who are the Syrian rebels and what ideological underpinnings do they have?
During
the early period of the uprising, much reference was made to an organisation
with the designation of ‘Free Syrian Army’. The background to this ‘body’
suggested that it had a unified command structure with a solid amount of
numbers which would continue to grow as it would absorb an envisaged amount of
defections from the army of Assad.
The
germ of the FSA was created by a Syrian army colonel defector who, along with a
number of commanders and foot soldiers, was based at Apaydin Camp in Turkey.
Despite
headlined press reports of assassinations and defections of several high-level
military officers, this scenario failed to materialise. Indeed, a compelling
argument was made with little or no disputation that the Free Syrian Army did
not exist and has never come into existence.
Instead,
the name was used in reference to a range of anti-government militias fighting
in different regions of Syria. Most appear to have a Salafist agenda and cannot
be objectively described as being ‘secular’ or ‘moderate’. Prominent among them
are the Islamic movement of Ahara Al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam, Suqour al-Sham
Brigade, Liwa al-Twhid and Liwa al-Yarmouk.
Indeed,
a report by the Times of Israel in
June of 2014 quotes the Israeli Defence Force’s head of Military Intelligence
Research and Analysis Division as estimating that over eighty percent of the
opposition fighters “have a clear Islamist agenda”.
After
the initial barrage of reports on the FSA, the genuinely powerhouse opponents
to Assad’s regime began to be acknowledged in the Western press. These militias
composed largely of foreigners included the Jabhat al-Nusra Front and ISIS;
both well-funded and more effective than the local ones.
It
is hard not to conclude that weapons earmarked for rebels under the auspices of
the CIA and Saudis would get into the hands of the Islamist groups, along with
the benefits of the training they have received.
It
is a scenario which was painted by Michael J. Morell, a former deputy CIA
director who in a CBS interview stated that the battlefield effectiveness of
the Islamist factions drew the so-called moderates to their camps. In his
words:
Because
they’re so good at fighting the Syrians, some of the moderate members of the
opposition joined forces with them.
A
proxy war of the sort fought in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union has been
apparent for some time, and the United States is at the heart of it. It would
appear that the United States is pliant to the goal of a fragmentation of the
Middle East, although, of course, such a policy has never been publicly averred
to.
Nonetheless,
some have referred to a map prepared by a retired army colonel of the United
States War Academy and which was published in the Armed Forces Journal in June
of 2006 as evidence of a US-NATO objective of reconstituting the map of the
Middle East.
Among
the significant alterations to the Sykes-Picot agreement which created the
modern nation states of the Middle East as we know them today are an Arab Shia
state, a Sunni state and a Free Kurdistan being carved out of Iraq with the
Kurdish state acquiring territory from Syria, Turkey and Iran.
Balkanisation
has clearly been at the heart of the policy of assuring the survival of Israel.
Indeed, it was a pre-condition of the emergence of the Zionist state that the
Ottoman Empire be broken up and that the succeeding power in the region of
Palestine, the British, would then take the steps which would lead to the
establishment of what was initially termed a Jewish homeland.
Early
Israeli policy under its first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, was geared
towards bolstering the power of the Christian community in the Lebanon. It
involved employing cynical strategies aimed at fomenting inter-communal strife
among the Christian and Muslim groups in that country and even a plan to acquire
territory up to the Litani River.
Indeed,
the diaries of Moshe Sharett, an Israeli premier during the 1950s record Moshe
Dayan declaring that Israel needed a Christian military officer to promulgate a
Christian state which would then cede Lebanon south of the Litani River to
Israel.
Both
Ben-Gurion and Chaim Weizmann, the early Zionist leader, had proposed this
northern boundary in an early map depicting a state of Israel which was
presented to the 1919 Paris Peace Conference after the First World War.
The
strategy of balkanisation in the Arab and Muslim world has a simple rationale.
Israel has always been wary of the emergence of any nation from these lands
which is nationalist in outlook, that possess a high degree of social cohesion
along with an economic and military capacity which could be directed against
it.
While
Gamal Nasser’s Egypt and his Pan-Arabist philosophy presented the earliest
visible form of what Israel perceived to be an existential threat before
destroying it in the war of 1967; Ben-Gurion’s vehement opposition to Charles
de Gaulle’s decision to grant Algeria independence provided ample proof of this
permanent quality of sensitivity.
After
Nasser, Saddam Hussein’s Iraq emerged as the threat, and following the 2003
invasion, Iran is viewed as the pre-eminent Muslim nation which poses the
greatest menace.
When
in the early part of 2003 the Bush administration was preparing for the
invasion of Iraq, the Israeli Prime Minister, Ariel Sharon called on the
Americans to also “disarm Iran, Libya and Syria”.
This
long time strategy is encapsulated within a policy document produced in 1982 by
Oded Yinon, a journalist who had once been attached to Israel’s foreign
ministry.
Formally
titled A Strategy for Israel in the
Nineteen Eighties’ the ‘Yinon Plan’ is predicated on Israel achieving
regional military and economic hegemony while working towards the division of
its neighbours into ethnic and sectarian based mini-states.
The
“far reaching opportunities” referred to in the document alluded to the range
of weaknesses and stress points in the various countries on its borders and
further afield which could be exploited by Israel so as to ensure their
weakening and eventual fracture. These included religious, ethnic and sectarian
rivalries as well as economic grievances among the population.
Iraq
was a priority with the desired outcome being a three-state division into
Kurdish, Sunni and Shite states. Egypt would in the best scenario be split into
“geographically distinct regions” encompassing a Coptic Christian state and a range
of other Muslim states while Syria was identified as been essentially
vulnerable because it “is fundamentally no different from Lebanon except in the
strong military regime which rules it”.
For
Yinon, Lebanon formed the template for the fracture of Arab states and as the
paper continued:
Syria
will fall apart in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure, into
several states such as in present day Lebanon, so that there will be a Shi’ite
Alawi state along its coast, a Sunni state in the Aleppo area, another Sunni
state in Damascus hostile to its northern neighbour and the Druzes will set up
a state, maybe even in our Golan, and certainly in the Hauran and in northern
Jordan.
Such
a state of affairs Yinon was convinced would serve as “the guarantee for peace
and stability in the area in the long run”.
While
Yinon’s work has often been quoted in recent years in relation to the contemporary
wars in the region, it is not the only document of record offering an authentic
account of such a strategy being at the heart of Israeli strategic policy.
For
instance, Livia Rokach’s Israel’s Sacred
Terrorism published in 1980 relates Moshe Sharett’s diary recollections of
the machinations of both David Ben-Gurion and Moshe Dayan during the 1950s in
regard to a range of tactics and policies designed to acquire territory as well
as to sow the seeds of discord within Arab nations.
An
updated version of this formula forms the explicit rationale underlying what is
known as the ‘Clean Break Document’.
In
1996, A Clean Break: A New Strategy for
Securing the Realm was produced
during the first premiership of Benjamin Netanyahu by the Institute for
Advanced Strategic and Political Studies, an Israeli political think tank.
Led
by Richard Perle, a key contributor to the aforementioned Project for the New
American Century, the document put forward the argument that Israel should renounce
all intentions towards achieving a comprehensive peace settlement with Arab
nations and instead should work together with Turkey and Jordan to “contain,
destabilize and roll-back” those states which pose as threats to all three.
And
as with the PNAC document, Syria features as a state in regard to which Israeli
policy should be geared towards “weakening, controlling and even rolling back”.
The
means by which such destabilisation and containment would occur were not always
explicitly addressed in the paper, but in practical terms it is clear that
these goals are effected through a panoply of methods including Israel’s use of
direct military action, its support for actors in proxy wars, and its use of
the military resources of the United States through the huge influence wielded
in that country by the Israel-Jewish lobby.
There
is of course sensitivity attached to the terminology used in this regard and a
debate in regards to the true scope of power American Jewish groups possess in
terms of influencing United States foreign policy.
Yet
the war declared on Saddam’s Iraq, the effects of which have led to the present
crisis involving ISIS and the threat of a permanent dismemberment, was
influenced by the likes of the aforementioned Richard Perle, as well as Paul
Wolfowitz and Douglas Feith.
All
are designated as neo-conservative in political outlook and were signatories to
a letter written by members of PNAC to the incumbent President Bill Clinton
calling for the military overthrow of the government of Saddam Hussein.
The
Israeli state lies at the heart of any serious analysis of the reasons why
America declared war on Saddam’s Iraq as well as the later war manufactured by
external powers in Syria.
In
the year before the US attack on Iraq, the Guardian
newspaper quoted the retired US Four-Star General Wesley Clark as saying that
the so-called ‘hawks’ within the Bush administration who were lobbying for the
war had been doing so well before the events of September 11th 2001
and privately acknowledged that the regime of Saddam Hussein did not pose a
threat to America.
“But”,
said Clark, “they are afraid at some point he might decide if he had a nuclear
weapon to use it against Israel.”
Carl
Bernstein, the veteran journalist and himself Jewish when referring to what he
termed the “insane war” in Iraq, asserted in 2013 that it had been started by
what he described as “Jewish neo-cons who wanted to remake the world (for
Israel)”.
The
‘reconfiguration’ of American policy as alluded to by Seymour Hersh has at its
heart the state of Israel. According to Hersh:
The
Saudi government, with Washington’s approval, would provide funds and
logistical aid to weaken the government of President Bashar Assad of Syria. The
Israelis believe that putting such pressure on the Assad government will make
it more conciliatory and open to negotiations.
In
a continuation of his revelation of the preconceived anti-Assad revolt,
Roland Dumas provided the following:
In
the region (i.e. the Middle East) it is important to know that this Syrian
regime has a very anti-Israeli stance...and I have this from the former Israeli
prime minister who told me “we’ll try to get on with our neighbours, but those
who don’t agree with us will be destroyed”.
The
pretence of Israeli non-involvement in the present war in Syria or even its
purported interest in maintaining the status quo with Assad remaining in power is
belied by actions and pronouncements.
A
report last year in Debka, a website
staffed by Israeli journalists providing news on intelligence and security
issues, revealed that senior IDF officers had criticised Moshe Ya’alon, the
defence minister for misleading the Knesset when he gave an estimate that
President Assad’s forces controlled far less territory than it actually did and
as a consequence, the Israeli armed forces were acting on the basis of
inaccurate intelligence.
“Erroneous
assessments...must lead to faulty decision-making” the report concluded.
An
explicit statement from a government insider concerning Israel’s attitude toward
the Assad government came from Michael Oren last September. He said the
following to the Jerusalem Post when
leaving his post as Israeli ambassador to the United States:
The
greatest danger to Israel is by the strategic arc that extends from Tehran to
Damascus to Beirut. And we saw the Assad regime as the keystone in that arc.
That is a position we had well before the outbreak of hostilities in Syria.
With the outbreak of hostilities we continued to want Assad to go.
Publicly
disclosed operations such as those involving the bombing of pro-Assad storage
depots and convoys claimed to be part of a logistical trail leading to
Hezbollah in Lebanon, while portrayed as surgical in nature were likely made
with the overall desire of weakening Assad’s forces in his campaign against the
insurgents.
For
instance, in June of 2014, when a missile fired from Syrian territory killed an
Israeli citizen on the Golan Heights, the Israeli Air Force responded by
mounting sorties on nine positions belonging to the Syrian Army including a
regional command centre.
This
mission was undertaken, a Times of Israel
report noted, despite the fact that “some Israeli (intelligence) experts said
the area from which the anti-tank rocket was fired is under the control of
Syrian rebels, not the Assad regime”.
The
present crisis generated by the gains of ISIS in Iraq and speculation as to
whether the United States should intervene on the side of the Maliki government
revealed the age long thinking and strategy of Israel’s leaders and
policymakers.
Speaking
on NBC TV’s Meet the Press in June,
Benjamin Netanyahu’s stated that “We must weaken both”. “Both” of course was
referring to the Sunni and Shia divide.
When
your enemies are fighting each other, don’t strengthen either of them, weaken
both.
Furthermore,
Netanyahu has recently called for the establishment of a Kurdish state.
But
the conceptualisation of a reformatted Middle East is not solely the concern of
the Americans and the Israelis. The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia has for long harboured
ambitions to be the undisputed leader of the Arab and Muslim world, and to this
end battled with the secular, pan-Arab philosophy as espoused by Gamal Abdel
Nasser for the soul of the Arabs, and, in more recent times, it is contending
with the Shi’ite bastion of Iran for regional influence.
Saudi
Arabia along with its Gulf emirate neighbours, most notably Qatar, have been
involved in the financing and organising of the revolts against the secular
regimes of Colonel Gaddafi and President Assad, and the stripe of the
beneficiaries such as the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, the Jabhat al-Nusra
Brigade and ISIS is clearly Islamist.
It
is a history which goes back some time and includes providing funds to the
Mujahedin in Afghanistan in the 1980s which many historians would argue
provided the germ for the development of al Qaeda and now ISIS which is a more
extreme offshoot of the former.
But
quite apart from pinpointing the instances of the documented funding of groups
such as al-Nusra and ISIS is the responsibility arguably borne by the Saudi
state for the rise of Islamic extremism in modern times.
The
pivotal moment in history, according to the case compellingly put by the Middle
East affairs journalist Yaroslav Trofimov, was the siege of Mecca in 1979. On
November the 20th, which was the first day of a new Muslim century,
a large group of gunmen numbering in the hundreds seized control of Mecca’s
Grand Mosque, the holiest shrine in Islam.
Led
by a preacher named Juhayman al Uteybi, the insurgents declared that the Mahdi
or “redeemer of Islam” had arrived in the form of one Mohammed Abdullah
al-Qahtani.
The
insurgents also had the objective of overthrowing the House of Saud on the
grounds that they had compromised the strict tenets of the Wahhabi creed
originally imposed on the country after it had been formed by Muhammad Ibn
Saud.
The
grievance stemmed largely from the policy of Westernization and amongst several
demands, Uteybi’s insurgents called for the expulsion of Westerners, the
abolition of television and the ending of education for women.
The
two-week siege was ended after the Saudis obtained the blessing of Wahhabi
clerics to storm the Mosque with the aid of French Special Forces and flush out
the rebels.
But
this came at a price. The Saudis clamped down in areas where ‘liberalisation’
had strayed such as the media and the school curriculum.
The
decision was also made at the behest of the powerful fundamentalist clerics for
the Saudis to pump money into the coffers of Sunni missionary organisations to spread
of the ideas of the Wahhabi strain in Islamic universities and madrassas around
the Muslim world. This purist brand of Islam lays particular focus on Jihadist
sentiment.
The
Soviet invasion of Afghanistan provided the opportunity for both the United
States and Saudi Arabia to tap into the Saudis rededication to Wahhabism.
President
Jimmy Carter’s national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, saw in the
Soviet move a chance to exploit outrage in the Muslim world, and the Saudis,
following a fatwa declared by Abdelaziz Bin Baz, later the Grand Mufti of Saudi
Arabia, provided funding for the local Mujahidin as well as the bands of
non-Afghan Jihadis who became the template for the contemporary multi-national
Jihadis operating in both Syria and Iraq.
The
aforementioned airlift of arms from the Balkans at the direction of the CIA
which was paid for by the Saudis follows a mutually agreeable pattern for both
nations.
A
key player in Saudi strategy in its power play with Iran and the manipulation
of Islamist militias in both Iraq and Syria has been Prince Bander Bin Saud, until
recently the chief of Saudi intelligence as well as the head of the Saudi National
Security Council.
So
far as funding ISIS is concerned, there are reports that Prince Abdul Rahman
Faisal, a son of the late King Faisal and a graduate of Sandhurst Royal
Military College, serves as the conduit through which Saudi policy is driven
and that he even influences the tactics of the group.
The
prince is the brother of Prince Saud al Faisal, long-time foreign minister and
Prince Turki al Faisal, ambassador to the UK and the US. However, this specific
allegation has yet to be officially corroborated.
One
clue as to the inclinations of the Saudi state towards this marauding army of
homicidal Jihadists may have been their issuing of a statement calling on the
United States not to begin a bombing campaign in ISIS.
The
Iraqi government has publically accused the Saudis of supporting ISIS and Prime
Minister Maliki has saddled them with the responsibility for what he describes
as the “crimes that may qualify as genocide: the spilling of Iraqi blood, the
destruction of the Iraqi state institutions and historic religious sites”.
Aside
from the sectarian-ideological motivations which lie behind the decision to attempt
to unseat the Assad regime in Syria is one with a specifically economic
dimension.
This
relates to the decision of the Assad government to reject a proposed pipeline
project through which natural gas would be pumped from Qatar to Turkey via
Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Syria.
The
reason Assad is said to have turned down the plan is that such a pipeline,
which by extension would be able to supply European markets, would undermine
the interests of Syria’s ally Russia which is the premier supplier of natural
gas to Europe.
Instead,
he pursued an alternative pipeline project which would emanate from Iran and
run to Syria via Iraq.
This
would explain the volte force on the
part of the purportedly neutral Turk’s after initially cultivating cordial
relations with Assad. Turkey cherishes the idea of serving as what has been
described as the “ultimate energy bridge between east and west.”
It
also explains Turkey’s use of a crucial natural resource as a weapon of specific
retaliation and one that it will continue to use as a source of leverage in his
dealings with Assad in Syria and the Iraqi government of Maliki: water.
This
increasingly globally scarce resource in regard to which the Turks sit on one
of the world’s largest reserves has of course formed a very underplayed yet
significant backdrop to a number of conflicts including the seizure of the West
Bank by Israel in 1967 and the overthrown of Gaddafi in 2011.
In
May of 2014, the Turkish government cut off the water supply to the River
Euphrates having started a process of a gradual reduction in the pumping of the
river. It has led to a drastic shrinkage in the water levels of the man-made
Lake Assad and is causing hardship to communities.
The
rationale for the United States overseeing a sectarian based war in Syria and
Iraq also has a basis in terms of accessing the natural resources of the Middle
East on which the West remains reliant for its energy needs.
The
need to foment such conflict; what in fact was described as a “long war” was
bluntly put in a United States Army funded report by the RAND Corporation in
2008.
Entitled,
Unfolding the Future of the Long War:
Motivations, Prospects and Implications for the U.S. Army, the paper crucially
identifies the geographic area of proven oil reserves as coinciding with what
it terms as “the powerbase of the Salafi-Jihadist network”.
“This”,
it continues, “creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is
not easily broken or simply characterized”.
The
following more detailed excerpt explains how sectarian fault lines can be
exploited in order to serve the interests of the West:
Divide
and Rule focuses on exploiting fault lines between the various Salafi-jihadist
groups to turn them against each other and dissipate their energy on internal
conflicts. This strategy relies heavily on covert action, information
operations (IO), unconventional warfare and support to indigenous security
forces...the United States and its local allies could use the nationalist
jihadists to launch proxy IO campaigns to discredit the transnational jihadists
in the eyes of the local populace...US leaders could also choose to capitalize
on the ‘Sustained Shia-Sunni Conflict’ trajectory by taking the side of the
conservative Sunni regimes against Shi’ite empowerment movements in against the
Muslim world...possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a
continuingly hostile Iran.
The
report is clear about the need for the United States to simultaneously shore up
the regimes which it classifies as ‘friendly’ to its interests such as Egypt,
Pakistan and Saudi Arabia while working to weaken the influence of Iran; a
strategy which it admits could serve to strengthen Jihadi groups, but which at
the same time would bog them down in sectarian conflicts that would divert
their energies from targeting the West:
One
of the oddities of this long war trajectory is that it may actually reduce the al-Qaeda
threat to US interests in the short term. The upsurge in Shia identity and
confidence seen here would certainly cause serious concern in the
Salafi-jihadist community in the Muslim world, including the senior leadership
of al-Qaeda. As a result, it is very likely that al-Qaeda might focus its
efforts on targeting Iranian interests throughout the Middle East and Persian
Gulf while simultaneously cutting back on anti-American and anti-Western
operations.
The
document is certainly prescient so far as developments in terms of the Syrian
uprising and the tumult in Iraq are concerned.
At
the same time, it is worth noting that the fomenting of sectarian antagonism in
order to fulfil an objective for the United States is not new to the region; a
specific example being the use made of Shi’ite death squads made up of
personnel recruited from militias such as the Badhr Organisation and the Mahdi
Army to nullify a Sunni-led insurgency which had been claiming the lives of a
great many American soldiers.
Thus
the bolstering of Islamist groups such as the al-Nusra Brigade and later ISIS
in a series of pre-conceived US military intelligence operations that are
pursuant to America’s long-term geo-strategic interests is not merely plausible
but is actual reality.
It
fits into reports during the early stages of the Syrian conflict of claims that
British and French military advisers were stationed at the borders of Syria and
offering Syrian rebels as well as prospective insurgents including those
arriving from abroad military training.
The
existence of training camps run by NATO officials and well as by former US Special
Forces mercenaries who operate private security consultancies in the Gulf has
been alluded to in reports via the mainstream press including the German Der Spiegel.
In
March of 2013, it reported that around 200 men had received training over the
previous three months in Jordan and that the Americans planned to train a total
of 1,200 members of the Free Syrian Army in two camps; one in the south and the
other in the eastern part of the country.
While
unsure as to whether the American trainers were serving US Army personnel or
were working under the auspices of private firms, the magazine did note that
some organisers wore service uniforms.
A
report by the British Guardian
newspaper, also in March 2013, confirmed the presence of US, British and French
military advisers who were giving Syrian rebels what was termed “logistical and
other advice in some form”.
While
the article claimed that such training was been given to elements described as
being “secular” so that an effective military militia would serve as a bulwark
against Islamic extremist brigades, such a claim cannot be taken at face value.
The
report alluded to the presence of CIA-led training camps in deeper locations
within Jordan, and just how the Western operatives can distinguish between
those who on the one hand are “secular” and those who on the other are
“Islamist” remains unclear.
Given
what is known about US policy via the RAND report and the actions of NATO in
aiding Salafists in the Libyan uprising against Colonel Gaddafi, such professed
distinctions are likely disingenuous especially when the accepted view is that
the overwhelming majority of Syrian and foreign insurgents view the fight
against the ‘apostate’ Alawite government of Assad as a Sunni crusade.
And
so far as the training of ISIS is concerned, several news outlets are
disseminating claims from Jordanian officials that members of ISIS were among
those insurgents who received training from Western military advisers.
Even
if it was accepted that prospective insurgents were not specifically coloured
by an ideological allegiance to militias bearing an overtly Islamist agenda,
and they were being readied to serve in the ranks of the putative Free Syrian
Army, it is quite clear that as argued above, such an entity is non-existent.
After
all its purported commander, General Salim Idris, whose organisation
represented the supposed counter-weight to the Al Nusra Brigade and ISIS,
relocated to Qatar in February 2014, his right hand man to Sweden and the number
three figure is apparently residing in the Netherlands.
It
is also more likely the case that a person nominally trained as a vetted FSA
candidate guerrilla would leave for one of the better funded Islamist groups
who offer their fighters more remuneration thanks to the largesse of wealthy
donors from Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
All
of this is done with the apparent acquiescence of the United States and is in
line with the thinking behind the report conducted by the RAND Corporation.
What
also falls into sync with the series of rationales behind that report is the role
played by former American internees in conflicts involving Islamist insurgents.
Many
of these figures, incarcerated in the context of the so-called ‘War on Terror’,
did not turn to the business of perpetuating acts of terror against Western
military or civilian targets but involved themselves in insurrections which
happened to be mutually beneficial to the Islamist causes and the United
States.
Consider
for instance the case of Abu Sufian bin Qumu. Qumu was renditioned from
Pakistan to Camp Guantanamo Bay sometime after the NATO conquest of
Afghanistan. He was released from US
custody despite the conclusion of analysts that he represented a “medium to
high risk, as he is likely to pose a threat to the US, its interests and its
allies”.
He
was transferred to a Libyan jail in 2007 at the time when the US and its allies
were cooperating with the Gaddafi regime in a policy aimed at containing
Islamists but released in 2010 under an amnesty.
However,
when the insurrection against the Gaddafi regime commenced in 2011, Qumu, in
the words of the New York Times
article in April of that year had somewhat perversely become “a U.S. ally of
sorts”.
Another
Libyan figure Abdelhakim Bel Hadj, like Qumu was renditioned by the United
States government and under the auspices of the British MI6 was placed in the
detention regime of the security services of the Gaddafi regime.
As
with Qumu, he was released under the 2010 amnesty by the Libyan government but
joined the militias which with the help of NATO overthrew Gaddafi.
The
head of ISIS and proclaimed caliph of the declared Islamic State, Baghdadi, was
himself held in US detention between 2004 and 2009 at Camp Bucca in Iraq.
He,
like the others, represents the ‘re-direction of energies’ thesis postulated in
the context of the “long war” predicted by the aforementioned paper.
It
might be going too far without any incontrovertible evidence to suggest that
men such as Qumu, Bel Hadj and Baghdadi are double agents ‘turned’ by US
intelligence during their periods of detention.
But
it is worth noting that that the dark arts as practised by intelligence
agencies including that of NATO military intelligence in its Cold War-era
manipulations of terrorist organisations of the extreme political Left and
Right in Italy are capable of refinement and readjustment.
During
that period, the techniques of infiltrating the leadership positions of political
terror groups and steering them toward pursuing certain course of actions, as
detailed in the infamous manual produced by Yves Guerin-Serac’s Aginter Press,
were successfully practised.
These
Islamist figures have effectively had ‘presented’ to them a series of conflicts
which have been tailor-made to assure the active participation of men of their
ideological disposition.
The
emergence of ISIS, barbaric acts and medieval-like edicts including the
announcing of the institution of the dhimmi
system notwithstanding, plays towards the prescribed US agenda in promoting its
short and long-term goals.
It
is also not unconnected with the turning of the tide gains made in the Syrian
conflict by the forces loyal to President Assad and their foreign allies, namely
Russia, as well as their co-denominational brethren from the Iranian
Revolutionary Guards and the Lebanese Hezbollah.
The
war against Assad has defied the expectation that his minority-led government
would be toppled in a short period of time as had happened with the Gaddafi
regime.
The
covert strategies devised by General Qassem Suleimani, the head of the Quds
Force which is often described as been analogous to a combined CIA and Special
Forces, has succeeded in stabilising the a situation which for a time was
looking very dire from the perspective of the Assad regime.
The
shoring up of this ‘Axis of Resistance’ against America and its Middle East
allies, most notably, the Sunni powers, has been critical given the high stakes
suggested by these words in a speech delivered by an Iranian cleric:
If
we lose Syria, we cannot keep Tehran.
The
stabilization of the Syrian front has been interpreted as a defeat by the Sunni
powers and the surgent ISIS in Iraq presents an opportunity for the Americans
in its continuing quest to weaken Iran.
After
all, bombing ISIS targets in Iraq could conceivably lead to bombing parts of
Syria under the pretext that such operations are being directed at ISIS. It
could provide a back door opportunity to carry out the bombing of Assad’s
forces which in the wake of the chemical attack at Ghouta last August had been
the intended course of action.
The
motivation behind the calls by made by ‘hawks such as senators John McCain and
Lindsey Graham for the United States to bomb ISIS likely matches this.
These
men after all must be aware of the overwhelmingly Islamist stripe of the vast
majority of rebels fighting in Syria who were the eventual beneficiaries of the
monies released by the US Congress in bills which both have strenuously
championed.
This
support, including their calls for President Obama to bomb and weaken the
military capability of the Assad government last August, is designed to create
the circumstances which would lead to his overthrow and the creation of a
vacuum which, as happened in Libya, can only be filled by those who would be
chosen by the likes of the al-Nusra Brigade and ISIS.
Yet,
the policymakers and the engineers of the covert operations enabling the
continuation of this ‘Long War’ must have in their calculations the
possibility, even inevitability, of what is termed ‘blowback’.
This
is the suspected backdrop to the murder by Islamists of American personnel at
the Benghazi ‘consulate’ which allegedly served as a conduit for the shipment
of weapons to anti-Assad jihadis via Turkey.
For
some time now, security officials from the Western European nations whose
radicalised Muslim citizens are participants in the wars in Syria and Iraq have
warned that returning jihadis would pose significant threats to peace and
order.
President
Obama himself admitted in June that the spread of ISIS-led conflicts to
neighbouring states could pose a “medium to long-term threat” to the United
States.
The
sponsors of the ISIS such as Saudi Arabia could also be imperilling their
long-term survival.
Like
a frankensteinian creation, an independent and emboldened Islamic State with
pretensions to controlling a Caliphate which does not recognise national
borders would not stop at Iraq and Syria but could attempt to overthrow the
Saudi regime on the basis that the Caliph is by Islamic tradition the designated
Custodian of the two holiest mosques in Islam: the Al-Masjid al-Haram in Mecca
and the Al-Masjid al-Nabawi in Medina.
Certainly
the threat to the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan appears to be the more immediate.
A video posted on Youtube in April of 2014 described King Abdullah as
“despotic” and a “worshipper of the English” and vowed to “slaughter” him.
While
President Obama has in August of 2014 finally caved into pressure to order air strikes
against ISIS positions, sight must not be lost of the greater picture; that of
a ‘Great Game’ and a ‘Long War’ in which the United States is bound to continue
its long-term strategy of protecting what it perceives as it national interests
including maintaining its access to the natural resources of the region.
Its
continuation was evident in Obama’s recent request for $500 million dollars from the US
Congress to train the so-called “Syrian Opposition”. According to the Washington Post, “money for the assistance would expand a CIA
covert operation’s training program”.
Developments
within the context of this long-term foreign policy objective continue to present
obstacles and also opportunities for the United States to exercise leverage.
So
even if the recent gains of ISIS were not deliberately manufactured by
Washington’s covert arm, it nonetheless provides an opportunity for the United
States to put pressure on Prime Minister Maliki who the Americans view as being
largely compliant to the dictates of Tehran and even to effect his removal in
favour of someone who would follow the American line more willingly.
Some
analysts suspect that the United States does exercise an undisclosed covert
influence on ISIS; with even the suggestion that they are directed at field
level by Western mercenaries or Special Forces embedded within their ranks much
in the manner as members of Britain’s Special Forces were among the rebels who
overthrew Libya’s Colonel Gaddafi.
And
that because the Americans created the political structures presently governing
Iraq including the supply of military weapons, that they are effectively
controlling both actors in the crisis.
If
this is the truth or at least close to the truth, it is fulfilling the template
of the “long war” outlined in the RAND Corporation’s policy document. The
United States will then seek to ‘manage’ this situation for as long as it can.
The
ability of outsiders to effect instability of the Middle East owes much to the
arbitrary border demarcations of imperial draughtsmen as represented by the
Sykes-Picot agreement, the sectarian divide between Sunni and Shia, the
miscellaneous tribal affiliations of its peoples along with the relative economic
and environmental fortunes of its sub-regions.
Oded Yinon was being far from off-handed when
pointing out in his paper that the Arab Muslim world was “astonishingly self-destructive”.
The
latent fault lines cutting across the swathe of lands from North Africa to the
Persian Gulf have been exploited by non-Arabs who have enabled the Arab nations
to be willing accomplices in the coups, insurrections and wars which have
brought havoc.
Very
few can fail to see that the present crisis as being causally linked to the
overthrow of the regime of Saddam Hussein by a war of aggression waged by the
administration of George W. Bush which was based on a false premise.
And
as General Sir Michael Rose, a retired British soldier put it earlier this year,
former British Prime Minister Tony Blair is self-deluded and “remains in
complete denial over the disaster he inflicted not only on the people of Iraq,
but also on many millions throughout the Middle East as a result of the 2003
invasion”.
Further,
despite the protestations of Richard Perle made last month about the use of the
term ‘neo-cons’ as what he emotively described as a “hateful” word directed at
Jewish Americans, the evidence clearly demonstrates that the invasion had at
the heart of the motivation of its principal proponents the destruction of an
Arab state which presented a modicum of a military threat to the regional
hegemony of the state of Israel.
It
is also disingenuous to deny the fragmenting of Iraq as a state, whether by
peaceful or strife-ridden circumstances as been the inevitable consequence of
the invasion.
Few
who understand the historical foundations of the policy of the Zionist state
cannot fail to appreciate the requirement that its survival has always been
predicated on the weakening and balkanization of its neighbours.
Also,
few who are aware of the policy agenda of the United States in promoting and
‘managing’ sectarian conflict as a means of assuring its continued access to
the natural resources of the Middle East will fall into a constricted analysis of
ISIS as a stand-alone phenomenon unrelated to the cynical quality which
underlies American strategy in the region.
It
is but merely one troublesome episode within a wider saga; that of a
twenty-first century version of the “Great Game”.
(C)
Adeyinka Makinde (2014)
Adeyinka
Makinde is a Lecturer in Law with a research interest in Intelligence and
Security matters. He is based in London, England.
