When we look at pictures of beheadings and crucifixions, and especially see the way in which IS fighters seem to revel in gory killings, we should of course rightly be horrified. But if we want to understand why this is happening – why people are doing this and why they seem to have a degree of support - we have to move past the concept that is so often thrown at us through our media and political ‘analysis’ that portrays the peoples of the region as some strange other forever manipulated by irrational emotions and sinister rulers. We have to take into account that these horrors are happening in places that have seen brutal organised mass murder for the past 20+ years. It is well documented that as far back as the 1991 Gulf War the U.S. buried alive huge numbers of Iraqi troops who wished to surrender and were in trench systems that were bulldozed. In addition, U.S. troops burned alive thousands or tens of thousands of Iraqi troops retreating down the highway from Kuwait. Fallujah. It is probably far from coincidental that one of the places that IS emerged from is Fallujah, a city on which the U.S. army launched 3 brutal assaults, each considerably more ferocious than the recent Israeli assault against Gaza. It is such ‘interventions’ and the unleashing of such military brutality on civilians that create the conditions which lead to the emergence of groups such as IS. Long term warfare has the impact of escalating brutality as the horrific becomes routine and so new horrors are invented. If youve seen family members burned alive by white phosphorous in Fallujah then beheading enemy prisoners probably looks quick & humane. The idea that U.S. intervention now can be part of the solution, when it was those interventions and their brutality that created the conditions from which further brutality emerged is clearly preposterous. In a region with huge poverty and wealth disparity, the crude wealth re-distribution (administered through one of the five pillars of Islam, Zakat – charitable giving) which IS practices obviously makes them popular with the poor, as does their setting up of a system of arbitration for resolving disputes between neighbours. This fits into a pattern seen elsewhere where Islamist organisations though providing basic charity are able to build a popular base in places where previous regimes were only interested in syphoning bribes off (witness the enormous wealth the US fed into Iraq that vanished into the pockets of the elite). As I said at the outset of the article, there appears to be no good news emanating from the region. All that can be said is that the idea that the U.S. will ‘fight terrorism’ and protect the Iraqi people given the previous history of U.S. intervention is laughable. It is incumbent on us though to try to understand what is happening and not to buy either crude right-wing Islamophobic (‘sure what would you expect from there?) caricatures or ‘liberal’ responses that see the people of the region as victims in need of western intervention to save them. READ ON: wsm.ie/iraq-syria-islamic-state
Posted on: Thu, 14 Aug 2014 19:39:09 +0000
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