must-read article by Dan Glazebrook - please share widely This war – presented as a new war against a new enemy, Isis – is in fact a continuation of the three-year old war against the Syrian state – itself a continuation of the centuries-old war against development and independence amongst the states of North Africa and West Asia, and indeed the entire global South. The fact that so many of the MPs in the debate who voiced support for airstrikes, did so with an admission that they will almost certainly fail to destroy ISIS, is one clue that this war is not what it purports to be. In fact, the British government is both unable and unwilling to destroy ISIS. Unable, because, as all serious military analysts agree, airstrikes alone cannot destroy an organisation like ISIS. As Patrick Cockburn pointed out shortly before the Commons debate, “Though air strikes will inflict casualties on Isis in Syria and Iraq, they will not be enough to defeat the group and may not even contain it.” ISIS’s continued progress towards Baghdad this week was a particularly swift vindication of the point. But it is the reluctance on the part of the British and US governments to coordinate their efforts with the forces which have actually been fighting against ISIS and its allies for years – that is to say Syria, Iran, and Hezbollah – which really demonstrates their insincerity on the issue. Why do they not pursue a more effective strategy? Because the defeat of ISIS is not really their goal. ISIS and its friends have played right into the hands of British foreign policy for the past three years, acting as the vanguard in the Anglo-American proxy war of attrition against the Syrian state. But the use of sectarian militias as tools of foreign policy has a much longer pedigree in Britain. The Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (Al Qaeda’s Libyan affiliate) were hosted in London for decades before finally being unleashed against the Libyan state in March 2011, their services to their imperial masters including a botched MI6-led assassination attempt against Gaddafi in 1996. The Muslim Brotherhood were cultivated by British intelligence as a means of undermining Nasser’s pan-Arab socialism in Egypt in the 1960s, but had already been used against the progressive liberal movement of the interwar years, the Wafd. Most infamously, the self-proclaimed ‘mujahadeen’ in Afghanistan – which ultimately spawned both Al Qaeda and the Taliban – were given full support by Britain in their war against the Soviet Union and the progressive forces of Afghanistan. This is all without mentioning the now notorious integration of loyalist death squads into the British army’s war against Irish republicanism in the 1970s and 80s under the auspices of the SAS’ s ‘Forces Research Unit’ – claimed by the British authorities for years to be nothing more than the invention of paranoid fantasists, until it was categorically exposed in one of the British government’s own inquiries. There is no reason to believe Britain has given up on this strategy of using sectarian death squads as an instrument of foreign policy; indeed in an age of relative economic decline for the world’s ‘former’ colonial powers, it is likely to increase in importance. With economic cutbacks leading inexorably to a corresponding relative decline in military capacity, the strategy of exploiting sectarian gangs for use against independent powers is likely not just to continue – but to grow.[...] And what of the ‘war against Assad’? Far from this having been eclipsed by the ‘war against Isis’, it is at its foundation. Having been thwarted from bombing Syria in August 2013 by Syrian, Russian, Chinese and Iranian steadfastness – and subsequent parliamentary nervousness in both the US and Britain – the West are now indeed bombing Syria. David Cameron, for his part, cleverly designed his motion only to refer to airstrikes against Iraq – ensuring that Syria was largely kept out of the debate – but insisted that he could expand the operation into Syria without parliamentary approval once it was underway. We are now being told that the West are being ‘forced’ to intervene in Syria because Assad failed to defeat ISIS, but the truth is precisely the opposite – the West is now in Syria because ISIS and its friends – the recipients of so much lavish diplomatic, financial and military support from the West and its allies these past three years – have failed to defeat Assad. The US – alongside Britain shortly, no doubt – are thus going in to Syria in order to take more direct control of a war in which, for much of this year, the momentum has been with the Syrian state forces. Indeed, there has already been talk of a Turkish ground invasion of Syria, along with a new initiative aimed at training yet more insurgents in Saudi Arabia (5000 more, apparently) – the breeding ground of the violent sectarianism that underpins ISIS. The idea is that if anyone is to seize ground from ISIS, it should not be the secular forces of the Syrian government (the only power capable of actually governing the country, even according to US general Martin Dempsey), but rather the forces of NATO and their ISIS lookalike allies. Why does Cameron claim this war will take years? Because he knows it will escalate. It will escalate because ISIS is only the preliminary target, the pretext. The ultimate target is, as it has ever been, the Syrian state itself. It is revealing, in this regard, to look at the pattern of US bombing within Syria that has already been revealed. A Reuters report from last week noted that the strikes “seemed to be intended to hamper Islamic State’s ability to operate across the border with Iraq, where it also controls territory.” In other words, the aim is not to destroy ISIS in Syria – but, as far as possible, to keep ISIS in Syria. Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, is amongst many others who argue that the airstrikes will not be effective at destroying ISIS. They are not, therefore, an act of foreign policy, he says, but merely a piece of macho showmanship. I disagree. Foreign policy is foreign policy, not a game; it only appears to be ill thought-out folly if one misreads its aims – or naively believes them to be what they are claimed to be. Noam Chomsky argues that states must be held accountable for the predictable consequences of their actions; I would go further. At least in the case of long-established, powerful and prosperous states with hundreds of years of experience in military aggression, we must also assume that such consequences are part of their strategic goals. So if Britain’s actions do not destroy ISIS, but ensue they remain focused on destabilising Iraq and Syria, we must assume this to be part of their aim. If they succeed not in degrading and demoralising, but in boosting the prestige and credibility of ISIS, we must assume this is a goal which Britain seeks. And if ISIS provide the pretext for the West to take more direct control of its war against Syria, paving the way for Turkish occupation, airstrikes against Syrian infrastructure, and the direct coordination of insurgent groups whose ideology and methods are a virtual carbon copy of those of ISIS, again, we should not see this as some kind of opportunist spin-off of the war against ISIS – but as its very purpose. counterpunch.org/2014/10/03/this-war-is-not-aimed-at-isis-but-assad/
Posted on: Sat, 04 Oct 2014 20:28:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015