The US War of Terror on Iraq and Syria
Darko Lazar
An oval shaped monument in the southern Iraqi city of Najaf commemorates those who fell fighting to liberate their country from British colonial rule in the 1920s. The turquoise green and grey structure is not much to look at by most architectural standards, and is more often than not surrounded by congested traffic synonymous with modern-day Iraq. But I found it to be rather symbolic at a time when the Iraqi nation is fighting a new foreign invasion.
The cemetery known as the Valley of Peace has expanded dramatically over the last few decades of almost uninterrupted conflict and hardship, in a country that appears to be caught-up in a constant struggle to preserve its sovereignty, independence and unity. Whether fighting the British in 1920, the Americans in 2003, or the newly packaged colonial product known as the "Islamic State" terror group, the Iraqi nation deserves praise for standing up to the latest in a long tradition of invasions.
The mainstream media are heavily reliant on short memories. So much so that few would have been drawing parallels between American troops strolling into Baghdad in 2003, and the colonial ambitions of Great Britain almost a hundred years earlier. But the protocols hadn't changed much. As was the case in the early 1900s, the game plan was simple - divide and conquer. Decades of crippling western sanctions had made Iraq easier for the taking. What followed was the near complete destruction of the country's institutions and infrastructure, paving the way for sectarian strife and, of course, the favorite new weapon in the western arsenal - terrorism.
Contrary to the popular western narrative that the "ISIL" - or "Daesh" - is the product of the so-called "Sunni" grievances in Iraq, the group actually emerged out of the chaos of the US-led occupation of the country. The terrorist organization, which has indiscriminately massacred people of all ethnic and religious groups, sprung out of US-run facilities such as Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison, where its self-proclaimed leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi was a guest of the Americans for a number of years.
Terrorism expert Louis Shelly, who is also the founder and director of the Terrorism, Transnational and Crime Corruption Center at George Mason University said, in an interview with Germany's Der Spiegel Magazine earlier this year, that Daesh "is a diversified criminal operation."
Shelly said that, "you can recruit staff among criminals by promising them that they will be cleansed of their sins...Within "IS" there are a lot of fighters with a criminal past."
Policymakers in Washington, who were forced to withdraw from Iraq in 2010, have plenty of experience with the concept of shipping off criminals backed by intelligence agencies into foreign battlefields to fight conventional armies. This strategy had worked so well for them in Afghanistan against the Soviets that ironically led to the creation of al-Qaeda, which later gave birth to the deadlier and more efficient Daesh.
The same policymakers have no reservations about openly expressing their support for militant groups fighting to overthrow the government in Syria. Military backing for such groups has been extensively documented even in western media outlets.
That includes The Daily Telegraph's March 2013 article entitled ‘US and Europe in major airlift of arms to Syrian rebels through Zagreb', the New York Times March 2013 article ‘Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With CIA Aid' and the Washington Post's September 2013 article ‘US weapons reaching Syrian rebels', which reported that the CIA has begun delivering weapons to militants in Syria previously promised by the Obama administration.
Since launching their air campaign against "Daesh" late last year, the US has signed an agreement with Turkey to openly train and equip Syrian militant groups to allegedly fight Daesh. American officials told Reuters that the program would last for three years and train 5,000 fighters annually. Washington continues to insist that it only supports so-called "moderate groups" in Syria, despite the fact that no such force actually exists.
US General Thomas Mclnerney, told Fox News last September that the Americans have backed the "wrong types".
"We backed I believe in some cases, some of the wrong people and not in the right part of the Free Syrian Army and that's a little confusing to people, so I've always maintained... that we were backing the wrong types," McInerney said.
But Washington's policy with respect to militant groups operating in Iraq and Syria extends well beyond mistakenly supplying arms to the wrong people.
The US-based WorldNetDaily cited Jordanian officials, reporting that US instructors at a secret base in Jordan had trained members of Daesh in 2012. Furthermore the London-based Conflict Armament Research organization also reported that the militant group was using "significant quantities" of weapons marked "property of the US government". Iraqi intelligence sources have backed these findings accusing Washington of actively arming "Daesh".
Meanwhile, the head of the Iraqi Parliament's National Security Committee Hakem al-Zamelli said that the survival of Daesh in Iraq is only made possible by the US-led coalition. Al-Zamelli expressed his conviction that foreign aircraft had dropped weapons and foodstuff for the terrorist groups in the provinces of Salahuddine, al-Anbar and Diyala.
"There is proof and evidence of the US-led coalition's military aid to "ISIL" terrorists through air [dropped cargoes]", al-Zamelli told the Fars News Agency earlier this year.
One can be forgiven for arriving at the conclusion that US foreign policy in both Syria and Iraq is slightly schizophrenic. The so-called anti-"ISIL" "coalition of the willing" is led by the US and comprises countries that have themselves offered similar support to the expansion of Daesh over the years.
In his piece for the Center for Strategic and International Studies, ‘The Real Strategic Goal in Iraq and Syria; How do you Bring about Lasting Stability', Anthony H. Cordesman writes that the US government has "no real plans for a meaningful post-conflict outcome, no real assessments of risks and probabilities, and no real effort to define and provide credible resources."
Mr. Cordesman of course fails to note that the resources being provided are ending up in the hands of the ‘wrong types'. That said, the Americans do not seem to be short of a vision.
The current US Vice President Joe Biden is himself a prominent advocate of the federalization of Iraq. In 2007, in what became known as the ‘Biden Plan', the then Delaware Senator openly called for the Balkanization of Iraq into Kurdish, Sunni and Shiite regions. The swift advance by Daesh across northwestern Iraq in the summer of last year had attempted to do exactly that, carving up large chunks of both Syria and Iraq with the hope of redrawing the map introduced under the 1916 Sykes-Picot Agreement.
But just like those who came before them, "Daesh" and their foreign backers had underestimated the endurance and patriotism of the Iraqi nation.
Following the fall of Iraq's second city of Mosul on June 10, 2014, the country's highest religious authority, Grand Ayatollah Sayed Ali al-Sistani, called for a national resistance to the terrorist advance.
"Citizens who are able to bear arms and fight terrorists, defending their country and their people and their holy places, should volunteer and join the security forces to achieve this holy purpose."
The result was tens of thousands of ordinary Iraqis picking up arms to join the fight, facilitating the emergence of ‘The Popular Mobilization Units' made up of four main groups that had previously fought the American occupation; the Hizbullah and Peace Brigades, the Badr Corps, and the League of the Righteous. These groups also joined forces with Sunni tribesmen and Kurdish Peshmerga forces, paving the way for the liberation of many areas seized by the onslaught of "Daesh".
It is perhaps little surprise that American airdrops to the terrorist group had become a lot more apparent recently, as the militants find themselves on the back foot.
The biggest military operation to date against "Daesh" in Iraq, which was launched by the country's armed forces and backed by the Popular Mobilization Units, has resulted in the almost complete liberation of the city of Tikrit, which sits strategically on the road to Mosul. Criticized for their lackluster support of similar efforts in the past, the US-led coalition wasn't even asked to participate in the operation. And just like the fight against British colonial rule in the 1920s, which saw the Shiites, Sunnis and Kurds unite, the fight to liberate Iraq in 2015 is also being spearheaded by the Iraqi people themselves.
Source: al-Ahed news
