[Peace-discuss] The sectarian terror group won't be defeated by the western states that incubated it in the first place

[David Johnson]

By Seumas Milne,
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq>
www.theguardian.com
November 16th, 2015

The sectarian terror group won't be defeated by the western states that
incubated it in the first place

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George
Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday
<http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/jun/01/trial-swedish-man-accused-te
rrorism-offences-collapse-bherlin-gildo> 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 and military vehicles), but training,
logistical support and the secret supply of "arms on a massive scale".
Reports were cited that
<http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n08/seymour-m-hersh/the-red-line-and-the-rat-line>
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
and 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
<http://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2015/may/21/london-cab-driver-guilty-ied
-bombs-us-soldiers-iraq> Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a
fortnight earlierfor taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of
Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and
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 - and allies are enemies - often at the
bewildering whim of a western policymaker's conference call.

For the past year, US, British and other western forces have been back in
Iraq, supposedly in the cause of destroying the hyper-sectarian terror group
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/isis> Islamic State (formerly known as
al-Qaida in Iraq). This was after Isis overran huge chunks of Iraqi and
Syrian territory and proclaimed a self-styled Islamic caliphate.

The campaign isn't going well. Last month, Isis rolled into the Iraqi city
of Ramadi, while on the other side of the now nonexistent border its forces
conquered the Syrian town of Palmyra. Al-Qaida's official franchise, the
Nusra Front, has also been making gains in
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/syria> Syria.

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, and
claim significant successes. Privately, officials say they don't want to be
seen hammering Sunni strongholds in a sectarian war and risk upsetting their
Sunni allies in the Gulf.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by
<http://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-29
3-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf> a
recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012,
which uncannily predicts - and effectively welcomes - the prospect of a
"Salafist principality" in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic
state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time,
the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which
became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the "major forces driving the
insurgency in Syria" - and states that "western countries, the Gulf states
and 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
and Iran)".

American forces bomb one set of rebels while backing another in Syria

Which is
<https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/secret-pentagon-report-reveals-west
-saw-isis-as-strategic-asset-b99ad7a29092> pretty well exactly what happened
two years later. The report isn't a policy document. It's heavily redacted
and there are ambiguities in the language. But the implications are clear
enough. A year into the Syrian rebellion, the US and its allies weren't only
supporting and 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
<http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alastair-crooke/syria-iraq-fractured_b_747154
0.html?utm_hp_ref=tw> 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
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/iraq> Iraq until the US and 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 and posting
atrocities online, and the Gulf states are now backing other groups in the
Syrian war, such as the Nusra Front. But this US and 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
<http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/mar/06/el-salvador-iraq-police-squads
-washington> 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 and 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, and 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 and Syria fit such an approach perfectly.

What's clear is that Isis and its monstrosities won't be defeated by the
same powers that brought it to Iraq and Syria in the first place, or whose
open and covert war-making has fostered it in the years since. Endless
western military interventions in the Middle East have brought only
destruction and division. It's the people of the region who can cure this
disease - not those who incubated the virus.

 

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