Now the
truth emerges: how the US
fuelled the rise of Isis in Syria
and Iraq
Seumas
Milne
Wednesday 3 June 2015
The Guardian
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 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 withthe 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 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 Anis
Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for 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 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.
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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 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 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
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 Sunni buffer to weaken Syria.
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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 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 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.
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/03/us-isis-syria-iraq?CMP=share_btn_tw
Y NOTA..
NAZANÍN ARMANIAN (Universidad de Barcelona): "(Con la intervención en Siria se trata de) impedir la construcción del mega-gaseoducto Irán-Irak-Siria, que cuenta con inversión ruso-iraní e iba a exportar el gas a Europa, ahora que ha fracasado el proyecto del otro gaseoducto. Perjudicaba aTurquía y a Arabia Saudí, que ha invertido en el Arab Gas Pipeline, tubería que recorrería Egipto, Jordania, Siria, Líbano e Israel. No menosprecien a Arabia. Las principales instituciones financieras dependen de sus petrodólares." Resto: http://cort.as/5dE5 08/12/2013 PATRICK COCKBURN en el diario británico THE INDEPENDENT: "Arabia Saudita ha jugado un papel crucial en la creación y el mantenimiento de grupos yihadistas suníes durante los últimos 30 años (...) para la gran mayoría de los yihadistas suníes, incluyendo las franquicias de al Qaida en Iraq y Siria, el objetivo son los chiíes. Durante mucho tiempo Arabia Saudita como gobierno se ubicó en segunda línea respecto a Catar en el financiamiento de rebeldes en Siria, y recién desde este verano se han hecho cargo" Resto: http://cort.as/75wRhttp://cort.as/QHs7
Y NOTA..
NAZANÍN ARMANIAN (Universidad de Barcelona): "(Con la intervención en Siria se trata de) impedir la construcción del mega-gaseoducto Irán-Irak-Siria, que cuenta con inversión ruso-iraní e iba a exportar el gas a Europa, ahora que ha fracasado el proyecto del otro gaseoducto. Perjudicaba aTurquía y a Arabia Saudí, que ha invertido en el Arab Gas Pipeline, tubería que recorrería Egipto, Jordania, Siria, Líbano e Israel. No menosprecien a Arabia. Las principales instituciones financieras dependen de sus petrodólares." Resto: http://cort.as/5dE5 08/12/2013 PATRICK COCKBURN en el diario británico THE INDEPENDENT: "Arabia Saudita ha jugado un papel crucial en la creación y el mantenimiento de grupos yihadistas suníes durante los últimos 30 años (...) para la gran mayoría de los yihadistas suníes, incluyendo las franquicias de al Qaida en Iraq y Siria, el objetivo son los chiíes. Durante mucho tiempo Arabia Saudita como gobierno se ubicó en segunda línea respecto a Catar en el financiamiento de rebeldes en Siria, y recién desde este verano se han hecho cargo" Resto: http://cort.as/75wRhttp://cort.as/QHs7
