PRASHAD: Well, the Islamic state is the child of al-Qaeda of Iraq or al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia, which was created in 2004 in reaction to the American invasion of Iraq and the American destruction of the Iraqi state. So its in that moment of chaos in Iraq that al-Qaeda of Mesopotamia was born. It was born with foreign fighters. It drew on an enormous amount of anger against the Americans; therefore it increased its support base. And this is its child. I mean, it was then reconstituted as the Islamic State of Iraq. Then it became the Islamic State of Greater Syria and Iraq. And now its simply the Islamic State. But it will not be destroyed by aerial bombardment. I think thats the first point to make is that the United States, when tackling this group and groups that its allied with, for instance, the Naqshbandi Army, etc., the United States has already been at war with these organizations during the battle of Falluja, in the battles in Ramadi, in the battles of Tal Afar. I mean, U.S. Marines have been fighting them over the last decade before they left Iraq. So its very unlikely that from 30,000 feet the Americans are going to be able to cower this very sophisticated and incredibly brave fighting outfit. So this idea that U.S. involvement is somehow going to change the tide of the Islamic States progress seems to me a little illusionary. But what it will do is it will make the fighters go to sleep. They will go underground for a little bit. Theyll wait till things calm down, and then they will reappear, because they are old-fashioned guerrilla fighters. It reminds me a great deal of the war in Chad in 1987, which was also fought from the back of Toyota trucks. Insurgents are very hard to get with this kind of conventional force. So the only forces that have been able to tackle the Islamic State are forces on the ground. Thus far, in Syria weve seen the most sophisticated fight-back against the Islamic State has come from so-called Western Kurdistan, which is a section of northeastern Syria which has essentially been given autonomous control by the Assad government. Theyve essentially made their own country. And they have a fighting force called the YPG, which was trained and equipped by a group that the United States claims is a terrorist organization, and that is the PKK, the Workers Party of Kurdistan, which is initially based in Turkey, but has been based for many years in Iraq and in Syria. So the PKK, the Workers Party of Kurdistan, a very sophisticated ground-level guerrilla fighting force, has trained the Syrian-Kurdish Army, and the two of them have been fighting against the Islamic State, both in Syria and now in Iraq. And, in fact, its this alliance that was able to get to get to Jabal Sinjar, where this--40,000 years these were essentially trapped on this mountain for almost a week. It was the PKK and the YPG that got to the mountain on the ground first, and they created their own kind of humanitarian corridor and got tens of thousands across the border into Syria. So this is one very important vector of the fight against the Islamic State. The problem is that Turkey believes that the PKK--and it doesnt just believe it; its true--Turkey sees the PKK as a significant threat to Turkish unity, because the PKK claim a large swathe of Eastern Turkey as Kurdistan, as northern Kurdistan. So whats going to happen is unless the regional powers recognize on the one side that Kurdistan is a force that is going to appear if indeed theyre leading the fight against the Islamic State. Secondly, they need to figure out that unless they start coordinating their strategy, in the gap of any coordinated strategy the Islamic State is certainly going to continue to grow. And the reason they cant coordinate strategy is that the neighboring countries of Syria have not yet come to terms with the fact that the Syrian Civil War essentially is really run out of steam, and that if theyre going to continue to put pressure on Syria, it is going to open the door wider for the Islamic State to enjoy a free run in the great Syrian desert that links the cities of Aleppo to Baghdad. So these kind of approaches, policy approaches towards Syria, towards the Kurdish movement, unless theres any movement on these these policy approaches, the United States is probably going to keep bombing the IS positions, IS will go to sleep, and in four or five years they will reappear. If you want a sustainable solution, it has to come with better and smarter politics, not bombing from the sky. therealnews/t2/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=12235
Posted on: Tue, 12 Aug 2014 20:26:13 +0000
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