That is so correct! That's why I say a good Muslim is a dead Muslim.
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ISIS is making tourble for Islam
- Thread starter Agoraphobic
- Start date
That is so correct! That's why I say a good Muslim is a dead Muslim.
tonychat is a muslim
Gosh! This guy (or whatever) is transgender, vegetarian, and muslim? This explains why s/he/it is such a frustrated bugger! Missing out on a lot of things and getting his arse penetrated all the time, must be rough!
Cheers!
Cheers!
How to Beat ISIS
Nov. 19, 2015
The war against the terror group requires the kind of grit and leadership that have gone missing
Whatever the world has been doing about ISIS, it’s not working.
A Russian passenger jet blown up over Egypt. Beirut’s deadliest suicide bombing in 25 years. A Friday night in Paris transformed into a bloodbath–the worst in France since World War II. Those attacks, the work of a mere fortnight across three countries and all claimed by the terrorist group, killed nearly 400 people and wounded even more.
The synchronized mayhem in the City of Light on Nov. 13 shook the foundations of the European Union, with its wide-open borders and paltry defense budgets. A gloating ISIS spokesman released a statement saying the attack was but “the first of the storm.” A former CIA chief predicted grimly that America’s turn is coming. A raid in a Paris suburb on Nov. 18 that left two people dead–including one woman who blew herself up as police approached–may have narrowly prevented the next attack in France. “We are all afraid,” says Zinbab Hadri, a Paris resident who witnessed the raid. “We are all victims of these madmen.”
It was another turning point in ISIS’s history of mayhem and misery. Previous turns since the movement caught fire include the capture of the Iraqi city of Fallujah–where over 100 American troops gave their lives during two key battles of the Iraq War–in early 2014, the seizure of oil-rich Mosul five months later, the proclamation of a restored caliphate and the escalating sadism of ISIS rule. All these turning points, it is now obvious, turn in the same direction.
A downward spiral.
That’s how things appear to most of the reeling world, which is why people search for a leader to tell them what happens next. The early results were dismaying. French President François Hollande promised to “eradicate” ISIS, but everyone knows that France lacks the military tools to deliver the all-out war he promised. Other European officials look nervously at the tide of Syrian refugees streaming onto the Continent–whom one of the plotters may have posed as en route to Europe, according to a possible match of a passport found outside the soccer stadium after the Nov. 13 attacks–and put up their fingers to test suddenly shifting political winds. In the U.S., Republican governors, lawmakers and presidential candidates jockey to see who could be tougher on both ISIS and the traumatized Syrian refugees suddenly considered a dire threat.
Which leaves President Obama, who has always been wary of leading the free world. Facing the press at an international summit in Turkey, he was weary and querulous when the world wanted galvanizing. The carnage in France he called a “setback”–albeit a “terrible and sickening” one–on a path where “there has been progress being made.” In the fashion of struggling commanders down through history, he found solace in data amid the smoke of an apparent defeat. Many bombing runs have been flown. Some square miles have been liberated. And if you think three major terrorist plots in two weeks is a lot, try counting all the plots that have been prevented.
Obama promised “an intensification,” but no changes, in “the strategy that we are putting forward,” which is, he insisted, “the strategy that ultimately is going to work.” Liberty-loving people would like to believe him, but the passionless Obama seemed barely convinced himself. In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in the West in over a decade, the President came across as impatient and irritable. “I just spent the last three questions answering that very question, so I don’t know what more you want me to add,” he groused to reporters.
What was wanted was the same thing people always want when they face a threat to their way of life: a leader who gives voice to their shared strength and lights the path to victory, however arduous. Barack Obama used to know this. The man who was elected in 2008 had an instinctive feel for inspirational leadership. Somewhere along the way, his disdain for his audience took over.
But Obama’s problem in rallying the world was not, as some aides suggested, a lack of understanding by his listeners. People can see that ISIS persists despite Obama’s dismissal of it, nearly two years ago, as a terrorist “jayvee team” to al-Qaeda’s varsity. They can see that a regional disaster has metastasized into a global menace, thanks to its sophisticated, agile, often highly encrypted Internet operations, which woo young, disaffected recruits with a thrilling mixture of torture videos, stirring music and calls to join a world-historic cause.
People learned, even as the bodies were being counted in Paris–129 dead in the immediate aftermath, with many others badly wounded and fighting for life–that France is home to far more terrorism suspects than French authorities can keep track of. At least two of the killers had been flagged as suspicious by authorities, yet neither was being watched: it takes at least 20 agents to keep track of each potential terrorist.
People learned that Belgium is so lax in its antiterrorism efforts that a neighborhood just across a canal from Brussels–the capital of the E.U.–has become a hotbed of European terror plots. As Belgian Minister of Security and Home Affairs Jan Jambon put it disconcertingly, “We do not have things under control at this moment.”
As for those bombing sorties on the President’s spreadsheet, which supposedly kill 1,000 terrorists per month? They haven’t stopped the flow of ISIS recruits to and from the caliphate. That $500 million U.S. project to train pro-Western fighters to take on ISIS in Syria? Abandoned as an utter flop. The Pentagon plan to rally an Iraqi army to liberate Mosul last spring? A figment wrapped in a pipe dream.
Because people understand these facts and others, it will take more than a grouchy recitation of his strategy for the President to convince the world that his plan is the best available. Yet what makes this situation so unnerving, and the need for leadership so acute, is that in spite of all the signs to the contrary, Obama may actually be right.
A PROBLEM FROM HELL
ISIS is a particularly difficult problem because it starts with this distressing fact: the forces closest to it aren’t sure they want to solve it.
The Islamic State is a fibroid of territory enmeshed in a cat’s cradle of ethnic, tribal, religious and geopolitical strands so densely tangled as to defy solution. Part of it lies in Syria, a chaos of competing factions trying to overthrow a murderous tyrant, Bashar Assad. Assad is propped up by Iran and the anti-Western Vladimir Putin of Russia. Assad is clinging to power in the face of Western demands for his ouster. ISIS might help him do it, because as long as the caliphate exists, he looks arguably less monstrous by comparison.
Iran, the leading Shi’ite Muslim nation, is preoccupied with shoring up allied governments in Damascus and Baghdad, and lacks an impetus for a full-scale assault on the jihadists. As for Lebanon, which also shares a border with Syria, the dominant Hizballah faction will take its cues from Tehran. Saudi Arabia is Iran’s wealthy nemesis. The kingdom might be able to rally Sunnis against ISIS–but probably won’t if the outcome could be a stronger Iran.
Other rivalries loom large in the infected region. The ethnic Kurds of northern Iraq and Syria have raised the only effective anti-ISIS force to engage so far. But Kurds have long been enemies of the Turks, so much so that Turkey, a member of NATO, is using the pretense of war on ISIS to bomb them. Forced to choose between honoring the Western alliance and preventing the rise of a Kurdish nation, Turkey would likely stick to old hatreds.
Analysts and candidates who fill the airwaves with easy talk of “taking out ISIS,” “establishing safe zones in Syria” or “strengthening the Kurds” are skipping the most difficult questions. For every key player in the region who might join in one of those projects, there is sure to be at least one other key player adamantly opposed. And unlike the U.S., those players are in the region forever. Which means that temporary solutions won’t do.
Furthermore, ISIS is different things in different places: in Syria and Iraq it is a military force and quasi-state; in North Africa and Southeast Asia, it is a loose network of radical movements like Boko Haram in Africa, the ISIS affiliate in Libya and the Sinai insurgency in Egypt; in Europe and the U.S., ISIS is an extremist ideology binding would-be terrorists and their hangers-on.
Eradicating ISIS in Iraq and Syria, even if it could be accomplished, would likely demoralize its far-flung satellites but would not wipe it out. Nor would the loss of money and security that comes with having a home base kill it off. The three recent terror plots were not expensive. And the Internet provides a virtual space in which ISIS operates fluidly.
Consider this: so far in 2015, more than twice as many U.S. residents have been linked to Islamic extremist plots as in either of the previous two years, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The total, 69, is small compared with the thousands of Europeans who have been lured to the caliphate. But it’s a clear spike.
And ISIS has emerged as the key recruiter. In past years, extremists were associated with a variety of groups, including the Somali organization al-Shabab and various al-Qaeda franchises. So far this year, all but two of the suspects were tied to ISIS. They discussed a total of 15 plots, compared with only one domestic plot uncovered in 2014, according to the ADL.
ISIS’s command of the online battlefield rests on its use of social media to attract and indoctrinate. This is “the dark side of globalization,” said anthropologist Scott Atran, who testified on ISIS recruitment at the U.N. Security Council. Young people–especially immigrants and children of immigrants–identify less with their physical communities and nations and rely more on their online connections, which can be penetrated by ISIS propagandists. Atran reports that some recruiters spend hundreds of hours in virtual communication with a single target, steadily tailoring the movement’s message to fit the individual.
For the traumatized children of war-torn regions, the message might be: join us and kill your enemies before they kill you. For the disaffected loner in a European or American suburb, it might be the fellowship of a movement of strong Muslims. For a history-minded dreamer, it might be the promise of restored Islamic greatness.
It works. Young people from an estimated 90 nations have been drawn to ISIS. (The terrorist group itself is far more international than the coalition fighting it.) And as travel to Syria becomes more difficult, a growing number of them have been urged to wage jihad in their homelands. “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman or any of his allies,” an ISIS spokesman announced last year. “Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car.”
THE SHADOW WAR
The Obama strategy tries to take this complexity into account. As he put it in his dismal press conference, he sought “a comprehensive strategy using all elements of our power–military, intelligence, economic, development and the strength of our communities.” When he announced the strategy during a low-key speech at the recent U.N. General Assembly, he was fully aware “that this would be a long-term campaign.”
Comprehensive and long-term: this makes Obama’s strategy the antithesis of the “shock and awe” approach to Middle East dysfunction adopted by the previous Administration. And that’s no accident. ISIS has its roots in the disastrous nonchalance with which the Bush Administration toppled Iraq’s existing order with no plan for a government to take its place. Much of Obama’s foreign policy can be summed up as: watch George W. Bush and do the opposite.
This reactive mind-set leads him to a pragmatic resignation that is different from Bush’s impulsive idealism–but perhaps just as insufficient in its own way. Humans have both hearts and minds, and both must find expression. Obama’s primary determination is to avoid the fly trap that is Syria. He recognizes the very real logistical problem of inserting an allied army into a country surrounded by problematic neighbors, and also the political problem of creating a stable order post-ISIS in the midst of Assad’s train wreck.
The logistics, he acknowledges, are probably solvable. U.S. forces could “march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out” the enemy, Obama allowed. Two successful invasions of the region in the past 25 years are proof of that brag. But what then? Is the U.S. ready to stay forever in Syria, and Iraq, and Libya, Yemen, Mali–the list of terrorist sanctuaries is not shrinking, alas–conducting “a permanent occupation of these countries,” as Obama put it?
The answer, as polls of Americans clearly show, is emphatically no. So what is he doing instead? He is eavesdropping on terrorist phone calls, capturing emails and texts, trolling websites: all the sadly indispensable surveillance activities that unsettle civil libertarians. He is plugging special-ops teams into dark locations and firing record numbers of missiles from whispering drones. The muscle of the Obama strategy is all hidden from public view, because it involves sneaking and spying and cold-blooded executions, not the sort of thing that Obama likes to talk about–or that Americans like to hear.
But that doesn’t mean this shadow war is without effect. During the same fortnight that ISIS turned so bloody, U.S. drone strikes apparently took out the head of the ISIS franchise in Libya and may have eliminated the notorious executioner known as Jihadi John. Meanwhile, U.S. commando forces are raiding across a broad range of the Middle East, according to sources, as silent as butterflies and as deadly as cobras.
The Obama strategy also involves chasing terrorist money, although this is a part of the effort ripe for “intensification,” to borrow his own term. It was heartening that U.S. pilots destroyed more than 100 oil-tank trucks in eastern Syria recently; strikes aimed at disabling ISIS oil refineries were also welcome. ISIS takes in an estimated $40 million a month from oil sales. But why this took more than a year is the sort of question that makes Obama’s strategy so uninspiring.
And the topic of oil points to the thornier question of Saudi support for radical Islam. The petro kingdom has for decades funded the spread of the Wahhabi strain of Islam that underlies violent Sunni jihad, whether al-Qaeda’s brand–Osama bin Laden was a Saudi national–or ISIS. Oil-addicted U.S. Presidents have long chosen to ignore this issue while looking to the Saudis to counterbalance Shi’ite Iran’s own brand of Islamic revolution. But the money must be stopped.
Obama’s risky decision to thaw relations with Iran marks a turn in U.S. policy away from the Saudis, one aided in part by growing American energy independence. Having waded halfway into a confrontation with this imperfect ally, Obama may need to go all the way, dialing up pressure on the oil sheiks to douse the fire of religious zealotry that they have stoked around the world for years.
There is a law-enforcement piece to the strategy as well; perhaps this is part of what Obama meant by his tepid reference to “the strength of our communities.” One of the frustrations of fighting terrorists is that arithmetic is on their side. As the Irish Republican Army said after a 1984 bombing that almost took the life of Margaret Thatcher: “We only have to be lucky once–you will have to be lucky always.”
But the shocking laxness of police work in Belgium, so evident in the glare of the Paris assaults, shows that there is plenty of room to intensify in this realm. Molenbeek is a small Brussels suburb across a canal from more glamorous parts of Europe’s capital. In recent years, it has been allowed to become home to the Continent’s most disenfranchised and dangerous citizens.
Attracted by the location–about two hours or less to London, Amsterdam and Paris by train–terrorist plotters in Molenbeek face little of the closed-circuit television and wiretapping surveillance they would meet in more attentive European capitals. From the 2004 Madrid train bombing to the assault on Charlie Hebdo magazine to the thwarted attack on a passenger train bound for Paris last summer, the mayhem of Europe typically is linked to Molenbeek. Per capita, more Belgians have taken up arms in the Levant than any other country in Europe–twice the per capita number of France and four times that of the U.K., according to a report released in January by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence. An estimated 30 of those battlefield veterans are in Molenbeek right now, the town’s mayor, Françoise Schepmans, told journalists.
Belgium’s head-in-the-sand response has “been a form of laissez-faire and laxity,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said. “Now we’re paying the bill.”
VICTORY AT ALL COSTS
Obama must start selling his strategy with passion and conviction because the next steps will involve some unsavory choices. Along with Putin will come Assad, who appears likely to survive in power despite gassing and barrel-bombing his own people. Obama will need to continue his embrace of Egypt’s military government. Meanwhile, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon need massive support in dealing with millions of Syrian refugees. Given that one sure response to Paris will be a surge of antirefugee sentiment in Europe and elsewhere, these overtaxed countries on Syria’s borders can’t be allowed to become miserable incubators of future terrorists.
For some time now, there has been a palpable disillusionment in this enigmatic man, a self-indulgent sorrow that the world cannot afford. He took office genuinely believing that a more “humble” U.S. foreign policy would be greeted around the world with peaceful approbation. His theory that American hubris was like a flame under a boiling pot–turn the knob to “off” and the bubbling will stop–earned him a premature Nobel Peace Prize, followed by a stern schooling in the realities of power-vacuum politics.
Yes, terror is the new normal. There were 13,463 terror attacks across the globe in 2014, according to the U.S. State Department: 1,122 a month, on average; about 37 per day, or roughly one every 40 minutes. What the world needs from Obama is not his chilly acceptance, however, but a stirring call to action. If he believes in his strategy, and evidently he does, his job is to rally the world behind it. Just as the bad guys are drawn to ISIS by the magnetic pull of a cause worth dying for, so do the good guys need a leader who sets before them a cause worth living for.
“Intensification” ain’t it.
Here is Winston Churchill, speaking to the British people at the darkest moment of their long history, when their defeated army was facing destruction and their arsenals were bare. “We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind,” he said. “You ask, what is our policy? I can say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy.
“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: it is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.”
Where the Englishman said policy and aim, the American President prefers to say strategy. And where Churchill could use the prenuclear language of total war, Obama fights by stealth, drone and terabyte. ISIS is not Nazi Germany, but it is a dark force that unsettles freedom and must be defeated despite great difficulty. In such circumstances, real leaders explain themselves; they paint stirring images, which can be done only with utmost sincerity. They connect the dismal events of the moment to an ultimate victory up the road. And this is never more needed than when the road ahead is hard.
–REPORTED BY JARED MALSIN/BEIRUT, JAY NEWTON-SMALL/BRUSSELS, NAINA BAJEKAL AND VIVIENNE WALT/PARIS, MASSIMO CALABRESI AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON
Nov. 19, 2015
William Daniels—Panos
Armed police take aim in Paris’ Place de la République during a false alarm on Nov. 15The war against the terror group requires the kind of grit and leadership that have gone missing
Whatever the world has been doing about ISIS, it’s not working.
A Russian passenger jet blown up over Egypt. Beirut’s deadliest suicide bombing in 25 years. A Friday night in Paris transformed into a bloodbath–the worst in France since World War II. Those attacks, the work of a mere fortnight across three countries and all claimed by the terrorist group, killed nearly 400 people and wounded even more.
The synchronized mayhem in the City of Light on Nov. 13 shook the foundations of the European Union, with its wide-open borders and paltry defense budgets. A gloating ISIS spokesman released a statement saying the attack was but “the first of the storm.” A former CIA chief predicted grimly that America’s turn is coming. A raid in a Paris suburb on Nov. 18 that left two people dead–including one woman who blew herself up as police approached–may have narrowly prevented the next attack in France. “We are all afraid,” says Zinbab Hadri, a Paris resident who witnessed the raid. “We are all victims of these madmen.”
It was another turning point in ISIS’s history of mayhem and misery. Previous turns since the movement caught fire include the capture of the Iraqi city of Fallujah–where over 100 American troops gave their lives during two key battles of the Iraq War–in early 2014, the seizure of oil-rich Mosul five months later, the proclamation of a restored caliphate and the escalating sadism of ISIS rule. All these turning points, it is now obvious, turn in the same direction.
A downward spiral.
That’s how things appear to most of the reeling world, which is why people search for a leader to tell them what happens next. The early results were dismaying. French President François Hollande promised to “eradicate” ISIS, but everyone knows that France lacks the military tools to deliver the all-out war he promised. Other European officials look nervously at the tide of Syrian refugees streaming onto the Continent–whom one of the plotters may have posed as en route to Europe, according to a possible match of a passport found outside the soccer stadium after the Nov. 13 attacks–and put up their fingers to test suddenly shifting political winds. In the U.S., Republican governors, lawmakers and presidential candidates jockey to see who could be tougher on both ISIS and the traumatized Syrian refugees suddenly considered a dire threat.
Which leaves President Obama, who has always been wary of leading the free world. Facing the press at an international summit in Turkey, he was weary and querulous when the world wanted galvanizing. The carnage in France he called a “setback”–albeit a “terrible and sickening” one–on a path where “there has been progress being made.” In the fashion of struggling commanders down through history, he found solace in data amid the smoke of an apparent defeat. Many bombing runs have been flown. Some square miles have been liberated. And if you think three major terrorist plots in two weeks is a lot, try counting all the plots that have been prevented.
Obama promised “an intensification,” but no changes, in “the strategy that we are putting forward,” which is, he insisted, “the strategy that ultimately is going to work.” Liberty-loving people would like to believe him, but the passionless Obama seemed barely convinced himself. In the aftermath of the worst terrorist attack in the West in over a decade, the President came across as impatient and irritable. “I just spent the last three questions answering that very question, so I don’t know what more you want me to add,” he groused to reporters.
What was wanted was the same thing people always want when they face a threat to their way of life: a leader who gives voice to their shared strength and lights the path to victory, however arduous. Barack Obama used to know this. The man who was elected in 2008 had an instinctive feel for inspirational leadership. Somewhere along the way, his disdain for his audience took over.
But Obama’s problem in rallying the world was not, as some aides suggested, a lack of understanding by his listeners. People can see that ISIS persists despite Obama’s dismissal of it, nearly two years ago, as a terrorist “jayvee team” to al-Qaeda’s varsity. They can see that a regional disaster has metastasized into a global menace, thanks to its sophisticated, agile, often highly encrypted Internet operations, which woo young, disaffected recruits with a thrilling mixture of torture videos, stirring music and calls to join a world-historic cause.
People learned, even as the bodies were being counted in Paris–129 dead in the immediate aftermath, with many others badly wounded and fighting for life–that France is home to far more terrorism suspects than French authorities can keep track of. At least two of the killers had been flagged as suspicious by authorities, yet neither was being watched: it takes at least 20 agents to keep track of each potential terrorist.
People learned that Belgium is so lax in its antiterrorism efforts that a neighborhood just across a canal from Brussels–the capital of the E.U.–has become a hotbed of European terror plots. As Belgian Minister of Security and Home Affairs Jan Jambon put it disconcertingly, “We do not have things under control at this moment.”
As for those bombing sorties on the President’s spreadsheet, which supposedly kill 1,000 terrorists per month? They haven’t stopped the flow of ISIS recruits to and from the caliphate. That $500 million U.S. project to train pro-Western fighters to take on ISIS in Syria? Abandoned as an utter flop. The Pentagon plan to rally an Iraqi army to liberate Mosul last spring? A figment wrapped in a pipe dream.
Because people understand these facts and others, it will take more than a grouchy recitation of his strategy for the President to convince the world that his plan is the best available. Yet what makes this situation so unnerving, and the need for leadership so acute, is that in spite of all the signs to the contrary, Obama may actually be right.
A PROBLEM FROM HELL
ISIS is a particularly difficult problem because it starts with this distressing fact: the forces closest to it aren’t sure they want to solve it.
The Islamic State is a fibroid of territory enmeshed in a cat’s cradle of ethnic, tribal, religious and geopolitical strands so densely tangled as to defy solution. Part of it lies in Syria, a chaos of competing factions trying to overthrow a murderous tyrant, Bashar Assad. Assad is propped up by Iran and the anti-Western Vladimir Putin of Russia. Assad is clinging to power in the face of Western demands for his ouster. ISIS might help him do it, because as long as the caliphate exists, he looks arguably less monstrous by comparison.
Iran, the leading Shi’ite Muslim nation, is preoccupied with shoring up allied governments in Damascus and Baghdad, and lacks an impetus for a full-scale assault on the jihadists. As for Lebanon, which also shares a border with Syria, the dominant Hizballah faction will take its cues from Tehran. Saudi Arabia is Iran’s wealthy nemesis. The kingdom might be able to rally Sunnis against ISIS–but probably won’t if the outcome could be a stronger Iran.
Other rivalries loom large in the infected region. The ethnic Kurds of northern Iraq and Syria have raised the only effective anti-ISIS force to engage so far. But Kurds have long been enemies of the Turks, so much so that Turkey, a member of NATO, is using the pretense of war on ISIS to bomb them. Forced to choose between honoring the Western alliance and preventing the rise of a Kurdish nation, Turkey would likely stick to old hatreds.
Analysts and candidates who fill the airwaves with easy talk of “taking out ISIS,” “establishing safe zones in Syria” or “strengthening the Kurds” are skipping the most difficult questions. For every key player in the region who might join in one of those projects, there is sure to be at least one other key player adamantly opposed. And unlike the U.S., those players are in the region forever. Which means that temporary solutions won’t do.
Furthermore, ISIS is different things in different places: in Syria and Iraq it is a military force and quasi-state; in North Africa and Southeast Asia, it is a loose network of radical movements like Boko Haram in Africa, the ISIS affiliate in Libya and the Sinai insurgency in Egypt; in Europe and the U.S., ISIS is an extremist ideology binding would-be terrorists and their hangers-on.
Eradicating ISIS in Iraq and Syria, even if it could be accomplished, would likely demoralize its far-flung satellites but would not wipe it out. Nor would the loss of money and security that comes with having a home base kill it off. The three recent terror plots were not expensive. And the Internet provides a virtual space in which ISIS operates fluidly.
Consider this: so far in 2015, more than twice as many U.S. residents have been linked to Islamic extremist plots as in either of the previous two years, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The total, 69, is small compared with the thousands of Europeans who have been lured to the caliphate. But it’s a clear spike.
And ISIS has emerged as the key recruiter. In past years, extremists were associated with a variety of groups, including the Somali organization al-Shabab and various al-Qaeda franchises. So far this year, all but two of the suspects were tied to ISIS. They discussed a total of 15 plots, compared with only one domestic plot uncovered in 2014, according to the ADL.
ISIS’s command of the online battlefield rests on its use of social media to attract and indoctrinate. This is “the dark side of globalization,” said anthropologist Scott Atran, who testified on ISIS recruitment at the U.N. Security Council. Young people–especially immigrants and children of immigrants–identify less with their physical communities and nations and rely more on their online connections, which can be penetrated by ISIS propagandists. Atran reports that some recruiters spend hundreds of hours in virtual communication with a single target, steadily tailoring the movement’s message to fit the individual.
For the traumatized children of war-torn regions, the message might be: join us and kill your enemies before they kill you. For the disaffected loner in a European or American suburb, it might be the fellowship of a movement of strong Muslims. For a history-minded dreamer, it might be the promise of restored Islamic greatness.
It works. Young people from an estimated 90 nations have been drawn to ISIS. (The terrorist group itself is far more international than the coalition fighting it.) And as travel to Syria becomes more difficult, a growing number of them have been urged to wage jihad in their homelands. “If you are not able to find an IED or a bullet, then single out the disbelieving American, Frenchman or any of his allies,” an ISIS spokesman announced last year. “Smash his head with a rock, or slaughter him with a knife, or run him over with your car.”
THE SHADOW WAR
The Obama strategy tries to take this complexity into account. As he put it in his dismal press conference, he sought “a comprehensive strategy using all elements of our power–military, intelligence, economic, development and the strength of our communities.” When he announced the strategy during a low-key speech at the recent U.N. General Assembly, he was fully aware “that this would be a long-term campaign.”
Comprehensive and long-term: this makes Obama’s strategy the antithesis of the “shock and awe” approach to Middle East dysfunction adopted by the previous Administration. And that’s no accident. ISIS has its roots in the disastrous nonchalance with which the Bush Administration toppled Iraq’s existing order with no plan for a government to take its place. Much of Obama’s foreign policy can be summed up as: watch George W. Bush and do the opposite.
This reactive mind-set leads him to a pragmatic resignation that is different from Bush’s impulsive idealism–but perhaps just as insufficient in its own way. Humans have both hearts and minds, and both must find expression. Obama’s primary determination is to avoid the fly trap that is Syria. He recognizes the very real logistical problem of inserting an allied army into a country surrounded by problematic neighbors, and also the political problem of creating a stable order post-ISIS in the midst of Assad’s train wreck.
The logistics, he acknowledges, are probably solvable. U.S. forces could “march into Mosul or Raqqa or Ramadi and temporarily clear out” the enemy, Obama allowed. Two successful invasions of the region in the past 25 years are proof of that brag. But what then? Is the U.S. ready to stay forever in Syria, and Iraq, and Libya, Yemen, Mali–the list of terrorist sanctuaries is not shrinking, alas–conducting “a permanent occupation of these countries,” as Obama put it?
The answer, as polls of Americans clearly show, is emphatically no. So what is he doing instead? He is eavesdropping on terrorist phone calls, capturing emails and texts, trolling websites: all the sadly indispensable surveillance activities that unsettle civil libertarians. He is plugging special-ops teams into dark locations and firing record numbers of missiles from whispering drones. The muscle of the Obama strategy is all hidden from public view, because it involves sneaking and spying and cold-blooded executions, not the sort of thing that Obama likes to talk about–or that Americans like to hear.
But that doesn’t mean this shadow war is without effect. During the same fortnight that ISIS turned so bloody, U.S. drone strikes apparently took out the head of the ISIS franchise in Libya and may have eliminated the notorious executioner known as Jihadi John. Meanwhile, U.S. commando forces are raiding across a broad range of the Middle East, according to sources, as silent as butterflies and as deadly as cobras.
The Obama strategy also involves chasing terrorist money, although this is a part of the effort ripe for “intensification,” to borrow his own term. It was heartening that U.S. pilots destroyed more than 100 oil-tank trucks in eastern Syria recently; strikes aimed at disabling ISIS oil refineries were also welcome. ISIS takes in an estimated $40 million a month from oil sales. But why this took more than a year is the sort of question that makes Obama’s strategy so uninspiring.
And the topic of oil points to the thornier question of Saudi support for radical Islam. The petro kingdom has for decades funded the spread of the Wahhabi strain of Islam that underlies violent Sunni jihad, whether al-Qaeda’s brand–Osama bin Laden was a Saudi national–or ISIS. Oil-addicted U.S. Presidents have long chosen to ignore this issue while looking to the Saudis to counterbalance Shi’ite Iran’s own brand of Islamic revolution. But the money must be stopped.
Obama’s risky decision to thaw relations with Iran marks a turn in U.S. policy away from the Saudis, one aided in part by growing American energy independence. Having waded halfway into a confrontation with this imperfect ally, Obama may need to go all the way, dialing up pressure on the oil sheiks to douse the fire of religious zealotry that they have stoked around the world for years.
There is a law-enforcement piece to the strategy as well; perhaps this is part of what Obama meant by his tepid reference to “the strength of our communities.” One of the frustrations of fighting terrorists is that arithmetic is on their side. As the Irish Republican Army said after a 1984 bombing that almost took the life of Margaret Thatcher: “We only have to be lucky once–you will have to be lucky always.”
But the shocking laxness of police work in Belgium, so evident in the glare of the Paris assaults, shows that there is plenty of room to intensify in this realm. Molenbeek is a small Brussels suburb across a canal from more glamorous parts of Europe’s capital. In recent years, it has been allowed to become home to the Continent’s most disenfranchised and dangerous citizens.
Attracted by the location–about two hours or less to London, Amsterdam and Paris by train–terrorist plotters in Molenbeek face little of the closed-circuit television and wiretapping surveillance they would meet in more attentive European capitals. From the 2004 Madrid train bombing to the assault on Charlie Hebdo magazine to the thwarted attack on a passenger train bound for Paris last summer, the mayhem of Europe typically is linked to Molenbeek. Per capita, more Belgians have taken up arms in the Levant than any other country in Europe–twice the per capita number of France and four times that of the U.K., according to a report released in January by the International Centre for the Study of Radicalisation and Political Violence. An estimated 30 of those battlefield veterans are in Molenbeek right now, the town’s mayor, Françoise Schepmans, told journalists.
Belgium’s head-in-the-sand response has “been a form of laissez-faire and laxity,” Prime Minister Charles Michel said. “Now we’re paying the bill.”
VICTORY AT ALL COSTS
Obama must start selling his strategy with passion and conviction because the next steps will involve some unsavory choices. Along with Putin will come Assad, who appears likely to survive in power despite gassing and barrel-bombing his own people. Obama will need to continue his embrace of Egypt’s military government. Meanwhile, Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon need massive support in dealing with millions of Syrian refugees. Given that one sure response to Paris will be a surge of antirefugee sentiment in Europe and elsewhere, these overtaxed countries on Syria’s borders can’t be allowed to become miserable incubators of future terrorists.
For some time now, there has been a palpable disillusionment in this enigmatic man, a self-indulgent sorrow that the world cannot afford. He took office genuinely believing that a more “humble” U.S. foreign policy would be greeted around the world with peaceful approbation. His theory that American hubris was like a flame under a boiling pot–turn the knob to “off” and the bubbling will stop–earned him a premature Nobel Peace Prize, followed by a stern schooling in the realities of power-vacuum politics.
Yes, terror is the new normal. There were 13,463 terror attacks across the globe in 2014, according to the U.S. State Department: 1,122 a month, on average; about 37 per day, or roughly one every 40 minutes. What the world needs from Obama is not his chilly acceptance, however, but a stirring call to action. If he believes in his strategy, and evidently he does, his job is to rally the world behind it. Just as the bad guys are drawn to ISIS by the magnetic pull of a cause worth dying for, so do the good guys need a leader who sets before them a cause worth living for.
“Intensification” ain’t it.
Here is Winston Churchill, speaking to the British people at the darkest moment of their long history, when their defeated army was facing destruction and their arsenals were bare. “We have before us an ordeal of the most grievous kind,” he said. “You ask, what is our policy? I can say: it is to wage war, by sea, land and air, with all our might and with all the strength that God can give us; to wage war against a monstrous tyranny never surpassed in the dark, lamentable catalog of human crime. That is our policy.
“You ask, what is our aim? I can answer in one word: it is victory, victory at all costs, victory in spite of all terror, victory, however long and hard the road may be.”
Where the Englishman said policy and aim, the American President prefers to say strategy. And where Churchill could use the prenuclear language of total war, Obama fights by stealth, drone and terabyte. ISIS is not Nazi Germany, but it is a dark force that unsettles freedom and must be defeated despite great difficulty. In such circumstances, real leaders explain themselves; they paint stirring images, which can be done only with utmost sincerity. They connect the dismal events of the moment to an ultimate victory up the road. And this is never more needed than when the road ahead is hard.
–REPORTED BY JARED MALSIN/BEIRUT, JAY NEWTON-SMALL/BRUSSELS, NAINA BAJEKAL AND VIVIENNE WALT/PARIS, MASSIMO CALABRESI AND MARK THOMPSON/WASHINGTON
Let's get it straight (and you won't get it from disingenuous Western journalists): the ISIS problem is intractable because US and her Western allies need ISIS to overthrow Assad, while the Russians are fully backing Assad and are the only ones genuinely gunning for ISIS. As long as the vested interests of the US are at loggerheads with Russia (and probably China now that they've lost a couple of hostages), ISIS will remain to terrorize the world.
And it's about oil and gas: Russia is backing an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline delivering gas from the gigantic Iranian Pars field to Europe, while the US is backing a Qatar-Saudi-Syria-Turkey delivering Qatari gas. Both powers need a friendly Syrian regime – Assad leans towards Russia, so the US wants Assad out and hence it's still supplying arms to the rebels who're part of ISIS.
Migrant Crisis & Syria War Fueled By Competing Gas Pipelines
Don’t let anyone fool you: Sectarian strife in Syria has been engineered to provide cover for a war for access to oil and gas, and the power and money that come along with it.
By Mnar Muhawesh @mnarmuh | September 9, 2015
MINNEAPOLIS — Images of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian – Kurdish boy who washed up dead on Mediterranean shores in his family’s attempt to flee war-torn Syria, have grabbed the attention of people around the world, sparking outrage about the true costs of war.
The heart-wrenching refugee crisis unfolding across the Middle East and at European borders has ignited a much needed conversation on the ongoing strife and instability that’s driving people from their homes in countries like Syria, Libya and Iraq. It’s brought international attention to the inhumane treatment these refugees are receiving if — and it is a major “if” — they arrive at Europe’s door.
In Syria, for example, foreign powers have sunk the nation into a nightmare combination of civil war, foreign invasion and terrorism. Syrians are in the impossible position of having to choose between living in a warzone, being targeted by groups like ISIS and the Syrian government’s brutal crackdown, or faring dangerous waters with minimal safety equipment only to be denied food, water and safety by European governments if they reach shore.
Other Syrians fleeing the chaos at home have turned to neighboring Arab Muslim countries. Jordan alone has absorbed over half a million Syrian refugees; Lebanon has accepted nearly 1.5 million; and Iraq and Egypt have taken in several hundred thousand.
Although it’s not an Arab nation or even part of the Middle East, Iran sent 150 tons of humanitarian goods, including “3,000 tents and 10,000 blankets, to the Red Crescents of Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon” via land routes to be distributed among the Syrian refugees residing in the three countries last year.
Turkey has taken in nearly 2 million refugees to date. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan made international headlines for opening his nation’s arms to migrants, positioning himself as a kind of savior in the process.
A paramilitary police officer carries the lifeless body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi after he drowned when the boat he and his family members were in capsized near the Turkish resort of Bodrum early Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015. (Photo: Nilüfer Demir/DHA)
Meanwhile, Gulf Arab nations like Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates have provided refuge to zero Syrian refugees.
While there’s certainly a conversation taking place about refugees — who they are, where they’re going, who’s helping them, and who isn’t — what’s absent is a discussion on how to prevent these wars from starting in the first place. Media outlets and political talking heads have found many opportunities to point fingers in the blame game, but not one media organization has accurately broken down what’s driving the chaos: control over gas, oil and resources.
Indeed, it’s worth asking: How did demonstrations held by “hundreds” of protesters demanding economic change in Syria four years ago devolve into a deadly sectarian civil war, fanning the flames of extremism haunting the world today and creating the world’s second largest refugee crisis?
While the media points its finger to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s barrel bombs and political analysts call for more airstrikes against ISIS and harsher sanctions against Syria, we’re four years into the crisis and most people have no idea how this war even got started.
This “civil war” is not about religion
Citing a lack of access on the ground, the United Nations stopped regularly updating its numbers of casualties in the Syrian civil war in January 2014. Estimates put the death toll between 140,200 and 330,380, with as many as 6 million Syrians displaced, according to the U.N.
While there is no question that the Syrian government is responsible for many of the casualties resulting from its brutal crackdown, this is not just a Syrian problem.
Foreign meddling in Syria began several years before the Syrian revolt erupted. Wikieaks released leaked US State Department cables from 2006revealing U.S. plans to overthrow the Syrian government through instigating civil strife, and receiving these very orders straight from Tel Aviv. The leaks reveal the United State’s partnership with nations like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and even Egypt to use sectarianism to divide Syria through the Sunni and Shiite divide to destabilize the nation to weaken Iran and Hezbolla. Israel is also revealed to attempt to use this crisis to expand it’s occupation of the Golan Heights for additional oil exploration, according to Wikileaks editor Julian Assange.
According to major media outlets like the BBC and the Associated Press, the demonstrations that supposedly swept Syria were comprised of only hundreds of people, but additional Wikileaks cables reveal CIA involvement on the ground in Syria to instigate these very demonstrations as early as March 2011.
Just a few months into the demonstrations which now consisted of hundreds of armed protesters with CIA ties, demonstrations grew larger, armed non-Syrian rebel groups swarmed into Syria, and a severe government crackdown swept through the country to deter this foreign meddling. It became evident that the United States, United Kingdom, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be jumping on the opportunity to organize, arm and finance rebels to form the Free Syrian Army as outlined in the State Department plans to destabilize Syria. (Just a few months ago, WikiLeaks confirmed this when it released Saudi intelligence that revealed Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been working hand in hand to arm and finance rebels to overthrow the Syrian government since 2012.)
These foreign nations created a pact in 2012 called “The Group of Friends of the Syrian People,” a name that couldn’t be further from the truth. Their agenda was to divide and conquer in order to wreak havoc across Syria in view of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The true agenda to hijack Syria’s revolt quickly became evident, with talking heads inserting Syria’s alliance with Iran as a threat to the security and interests of the United States and its allies in the region. It’s no secret that Syria’s government is a major arms, oil and gas, and weapons ally of Iran and Lebanon’s resistance political group Hezbollah.
But it’s important to note the timing: This coalition and meddling in Syria came about immediately on the heels of discussions of an Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline that was to be built between 2014 and 2016 from Iran’s giant South Pars field through Iraq and Syria. With a possible extension to Lebanon, it would eventually reach Europe, the target export market.
Perhaps the most accurate description of the current crisis over gas, oil and pipelines that is raging in Syria has been described by Dmitry Minin, writing for the Strategic Cultural Foundation in May 2013:
“A battle is raging over whether pipelines will go toward Europe from east to west, from Iran and Iraq to the Mediterranean coast of Syria, or take a more northbound route from Qatar and Saudi Arabia via Syria and Turkey. Having realized that the stalled Nabucco pipeline, and indeed the entire Southern Corridor, are backed up only by Azerbaijan’s reserves and can never equal Russian supplies to Europe or thwart the construction of the South Stream, the West is in a hurry to replace them with resources from the Persian Gulf. Syria ends up being a key link in this chain, and it leans in favor of Iran and Russia; thus it was decided in the Western capitals that its regime needs to change."
It’s the oil, gas and pipelines, stupid!
Indeed, tensions were building between Russia, the U.S. and the European Union amid concerns that the European gas market would be held hostage to Russian gas giant Gazprom. The proposed Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline would be essential to diversifying Europe’s energy supplies away from Russia.
Turkey is Gazprom’s second-largest customer. The entire Turkish energy security structure relies on gas from Russia and Iran. Plus, Turkey was harboring Ottoman-like ambitions of becoming a strategic crossroads for the export of Russian, Caspian-Central Asian, Iraqi and Iranian oil and even gas to Europe, assesses journalist Pepe Escobar writing for Al Jazeera.
The Guardian reported in August 2013:
“Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar and Turkey that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was ‘to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas."
Note the purple line which traces the proposed Qatar-Turkey natural gas pipeline and note that all of the countries highlighted in red are part of a new coalition hastily put together after Turkey finally (in exchange for NATO’s acquiescence on Erdogan’s politically-motivated war with the PKK) agreed to allow the US to fly combat missions against ISIS targets from Incirlik. Now note which country along the purple line is not highlighted in red. That’s because Bashar al-Assad didn’t support the pipeline and now we’re seeing what happens when you’re a Mid-East strongman and you decide not to support something the US and Saudi Arabia want to get done. (Map: ZeroHedge.com)
Knowing Syria was a critical piece in its energy strategy, Turkey attempted to persuade Syrian President Bashar Assad to reform this Iranian pipeline and to work with the proposed Qatar-Turkey pipeline, which would ultimately satisfy Turkey and the Gulf Arab nations’ quest for dominance over gas supplies, who are the United State’s allies. But after Assad refused Turkey’s proposal, Turkey and its allies became the major architects of Syria’s “civil war.”
Much of the strategy currently at play was described back in a 2008 U.S. Army-funded RAND report, “Unfolding the Future of the Long War”:
“The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized. … For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources. … The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war.”
The report notes that another option would be “to take sides in the conflict, possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran.”
This framework crafted an interesting axis: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, U.S., Britain and France vs. Syria, Iran and Russia.
Divide and conquer: A path to regime change
With the U.S., France, Britain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — aka, the new “Friends of Syria” coalition — publicly calling for the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad between 2011 and 2012 after Assad’s refusal to sign onto the gas pipeline, the funds and arms flowing into Syria to feed the so-called “moderate” rebels were pushing Syria into a humanitarian crisis. Rebel groups were being organized left and right, many of which featured foreign fighters and many of which had allied with al-Qaida.
The Syrian government responded with a heavy hand, targeting rebel held areas and killing civilians in the process.
Since Syria is religiously diverse, the so-called “Friends of Syria” pushed sectarianism as their official “divide and conquer” strategy to oust Assad. Claiming that Alawites ruled over a majority Sunni nation, the call by the “moderate” U.S.-backed rebels became one about Sunni liberation.
Although the war is being sold to the public as a Sunni-Shiite conflict, so-called Sunni groups like ISIS, the Syrian al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (the Nusra Front) and even the “moderate” Free Syrian Army have indiscriminately targeted Syria’s Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Jews. At the same time, these same foreign nations supported and even armed the Bahraini government, which claims to be Sunni, in its violent crackdown on the majority Shiite pro-democracy demonstrations that swept the nation.
The Syrian government army itself is of over 80 percent Sunnis, which indicates that the true agenda has been politically — not religiously — motivated.
In addition to this, the Assad family is Alawite, an Islamic sect that the media has clumped in with Shiites, though most Shiites would agree that the two are unrelated. Further, the Assad family is described as secular and running a secular nation. Counting Alawites as Shiites was simply another way to push a sectarian framework for the conflict: It allowed for the premise that the Syria-Iran alliance was based on religion, when, in fact, it was an economic relationship.
This framework carefully crafted the Syrian conflict as a Sunni revolution to liberate itself from Shiite influence that Iran was supposedly spreading to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
But the truth is, Syria’s Sunni community is divided, and many defected to join groups like the Free Syrian Army, ISIS and al-Qaida. And as mentioned earlier, over 80 percent of Assad’s military is Sunni.
As early as 2012, additional rebels armed and financed by Arab Gulf nations and Turkey like al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood, declared all-out war against Shiites. They even threatened to attack Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraq’s government after they had overthrown the Assad government.
Soon after, the majority of the Muslim Brotherhood rebels became part of al-Qaida-affiliated groups. Together, they announced that they would destroy all shrines — not just those ones which hold particular importance to Shiites.
Hezbollah entered the scene in 2012 and allied itself with the Syrian government to fight al-Nusra and ISIS, which were officially being armed and financed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. And all the arms were actively being sold to these nations by the United States. Thus, US arms were falling into the hands of the same terror group the US claims to be fighting in its broader War on Terror.
According to reports, Hezbollah was and has been been active in preventing rebel penetration from Syria to Lebanon, “being one of the most active forces in the Syrian civil war spillover in Lebanon.” Despite this, the U.S. sanctioned both the Syrian government and Hezbollah in 2012.
Also that year, Russia and Iran sent military advisers to assist the Syrian government in quelling the terror groups, but Iranian troops were not on the ground fighting during this time.
What was once a secular, diverse and peaceful nation, was looking more like it was on its way to becoming the next Afghanistan; its people living under Taliban-style rule as jihadists took over more land and conquered more cities.
Effects of foreign meddling outweigh self-determination
If you think that was hard to follow, you’re certainly not alone.
Most sectarian civil wars are purposely crafted to pit sides against one another to allow for a “divide and conquer” approach that breaks larger concentrations of power into smaller factions that have more difficulty linking up. It’s a colonial doctrine that the British Empire famously used, and what we see taking place in Syria is no different.
So, let’s get one thing straight: This is not about religion. It might be convenient to say that Arabs or Muslims kill each other, and it’s easy to frame these conflicts as sectarian to paint the region and its people as barbaric. But this Orientalist, overly simplistic view of conflict in the Middle East dehumanizes the victims of these wars to justify direct and indirect military action.
If the truth was presented to the public from the perspective that these wars are about economic interests, most people would not support any covert funding and arming of rebels or direct intervention. In fact, the majority of the public would protest against war. But when something is presented to the public as a matter of good versus evil, we are naturally inclined to side with the “good” and justify war to fight off the supposed “evil.”
The political rhetoric has been carefully crafted to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. Ultimately, no matter the agendas, the alliances or instability brought on by foreign meddling, the calls for freedom, democracy and equality that erupted in 2011 were real then and they’re real today. And let’s not forget that the lack of freedom, democracy and equality have been brought on more by foreign meddling to prop up brutal dictators and arm terror groups than by self-determination.
The people in the Middle East once stood united and strong together against foreign meddling, exploitation and colonialism no matter their religious or cultural background. But today, the Middle East is being torn to shreds by manipulative plans to gain oil and gas access by pitting people against one another based on religion. The ensuing chaos provides ample cover to install a new regime that’s more amenable to opening up oil pipelines and ensuring favorable routes for the highest bidders.
And in this push for energy, it’s the people who suffer most. In Syria, they are fleeing en masse. They’re waking up, putting sneakers on their little boys and girls, and hopping on boats without life jackets, hoping just to make it to another shore. They’re risking their lives, knowing full well that they may never reach that other shore, because the hope of somewhere else is better than the reality at home.
And it's about oil and gas: Russia is backing an Iran-Iraq-Syria pipeline delivering gas from the gigantic Iranian Pars field to Europe, while the US is backing a Qatar-Saudi-Syria-Turkey delivering Qatari gas. Both powers need a friendly Syrian regime – Assad leans towards Russia, so the US wants Assad out and hence it's still supplying arms to the rebels who're part of ISIS.
Migrant Crisis & Syria War Fueled By Competing Gas Pipelines
Don’t let anyone fool you: Sectarian strife in Syria has been engineered to provide cover for a war for access to oil and gas, and the power and money that come along with it.
By Mnar Muhawesh @mnarmuh | September 9, 2015
MINNEAPOLIS — Images of Aylan Kurdi, the three-year-old Syrian – Kurdish boy who washed up dead on Mediterranean shores in his family’s attempt to flee war-torn Syria, have grabbed the attention of people around the world, sparking outrage about the true costs of war.
The heart-wrenching refugee crisis unfolding across the Middle East and at European borders has ignited a much needed conversation on the ongoing strife and instability that’s driving people from their homes in countries like Syria, Libya and Iraq. It’s brought international attention to the inhumane treatment these refugees are receiving if — and it is a major “if” — they arrive at Europe’s door.
In Syria, for example, foreign powers have sunk the nation into a nightmare combination of civil war, foreign invasion and terrorism. Syrians are in the impossible position of having to choose between living in a warzone, being targeted by groups like ISIS and the Syrian government’s brutal crackdown, or faring dangerous waters with minimal safety equipment only to be denied food, water and safety by European governments if they reach shore.
Other Syrians fleeing the chaos at home have turned to neighboring Arab Muslim countries. Jordan alone has absorbed over half a million Syrian refugees; Lebanon has accepted nearly 1.5 million; and Iraq and Egypt have taken in several hundred thousand.
Although it’s not an Arab nation or even part of the Middle East, Iran sent 150 tons of humanitarian goods, including “3,000 tents and 10,000 blankets, to the Red Crescents of Jordan, Iraq and Lebanon” via land routes to be distributed among the Syrian refugees residing in the three countries last year.
Turkey has taken in nearly 2 million refugees to date. Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Erdogan made international headlines for opening his nation’s arms to migrants, positioning himself as a kind of savior in the process.
A paramilitary police officer carries the lifeless body of three-year-old Aylan Kurdi after he drowned when the boat he and his family members were in capsized near the Turkish resort of Bodrum early Wednesday, Sept. 2, 2015. (Photo: Nilüfer Demir/DHA)
While there’s certainly a conversation taking place about refugees — who they are, where they’re going, who’s helping them, and who isn’t — what’s absent is a discussion on how to prevent these wars from starting in the first place. Media outlets and political talking heads have found many opportunities to point fingers in the blame game, but not one media organization has accurately broken down what’s driving the chaos: control over gas, oil and resources.
Indeed, it’s worth asking: How did demonstrations held by “hundreds” of protesters demanding economic change in Syria four years ago devolve into a deadly sectarian civil war, fanning the flames of extremism haunting the world today and creating the world’s second largest refugee crisis?
While the media points its finger to Syrian President Bashar Assad’s barrel bombs and political analysts call for more airstrikes against ISIS and harsher sanctions against Syria, we’re four years into the crisis and most people have no idea how this war even got started.
This “civil war” is not about religion
Citing a lack of access on the ground, the United Nations stopped regularly updating its numbers of casualties in the Syrian civil war in January 2014. Estimates put the death toll between 140,200 and 330,380, with as many as 6 million Syrians displaced, according to the U.N.
While there is no question that the Syrian government is responsible for many of the casualties resulting from its brutal crackdown, this is not just a Syrian problem.
Foreign meddling in Syria began several years before the Syrian revolt erupted. Wikieaks released leaked US State Department cables from 2006revealing U.S. plans to overthrow the Syrian government through instigating civil strife, and receiving these very orders straight from Tel Aviv. The leaks reveal the United State’s partnership with nations like Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Qatar and even Egypt to use sectarianism to divide Syria through the Sunni and Shiite divide to destabilize the nation to weaken Iran and Hezbolla. Israel is also revealed to attempt to use this crisis to expand it’s occupation of the Golan Heights for additional oil exploration, according to Wikileaks editor Julian Assange.
According to major media outlets like the BBC and the Associated Press, the demonstrations that supposedly swept Syria were comprised of only hundreds of people, but additional Wikileaks cables reveal CIA involvement on the ground in Syria to instigate these very demonstrations as early as March 2011.
Just a few months into the demonstrations which now consisted of hundreds of armed protesters with CIA ties, demonstrations grew larger, armed non-Syrian rebel groups swarmed into Syria, and a severe government crackdown swept through the country to deter this foreign meddling. It became evident that the United States, United Kingdom, France, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey would be jumping on the opportunity to organize, arm and finance rebels to form the Free Syrian Army as outlined in the State Department plans to destabilize Syria. (Just a few months ago, WikiLeaks confirmed this when it released Saudi intelligence that revealed Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia had been working hand in hand to arm and finance rebels to overthrow the Syrian government since 2012.)
These foreign nations created a pact in 2012 called “The Group of Friends of the Syrian People,” a name that couldn’t be further from the truth. Their agenda was to divide and conquer in order to wreak havoc across Syria in view of overthrowing Syrian President Bashar Assad.
The true agenda to hijack Syria’s revolt quickly became evident, with talking heads inserting Syria’s alliance with Iran as a threat to the security and interests of the United States and its allies in the region. It’s no secret that Syria’s government is a major arms, oil and gas, and weapons ally of Iran and Lebanon’s resistance political group Hezbollah.
But it’s important to note the timing: This coalition and meddling in Syria came about immediately on the heels of discussions of an Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline that was to be built between 2014 and 2016 from Iran’s giant South Pars field through Iraq and Syria. With a possible extension to Lebanon, it would eventually reach Europe, the target export market.
Perhaps the most accurate description of the current crisis over gas, oil and pipelines that is raging in Syria has been described by Dmitry Minin, writing for the Strategic Cultural Foundation in May 2013:
“A battle is raging over whether pipelines will go toward Europe from east to west, from Iran and Iraq to the Mediterranean coast of Syria, or take a more northbound route from Qatar and Saudi Arabia via Syria and Turkey. Having realized that the stalled Nabucco pipeline, and indeed the entire Southern Corridor, are backed up only by Azerbaijan’s reserves and can never equal Russian supplies to Europe or thwart the construction of the South Stream, the West is in a hurry to replace them with resources from the Persian Gulf. Syria ends up being a key link in this chain, and it leans in favor of Iran and Russia; thus it was decided in the Western capitals that its regime needs to change."
It’s the oil, gas and pipelines, stupid!
Indeed, tensions were building between Russia, the U.S. and the European Union amid concerns that the European gas market would be held hostage to Russian gas giant Gazprom. The proposed Iran-Iraq-Syria gas pipeline would be essential to diversifying Europe’s energy supplies away from Russia.
Turkey is Gazprom’s second-largest customer. The entire Turkish energy security structure relies on gas from Russia and Iran. Plus, Turkey was harboring Ottoman-like ambitions of becoming a strategic crossroads for the export of Russian, Caspian-Central Asian, Iraqi and Iranian oil and even gas to Europe, assesses journalist Pepe Escobar writing for Al Jazeera.
The Guardian reported in August 2013:
“Assad refused to sign a proposed agreement with Qatar and Turkey that would run a pipeline from the latter’s North field, contiguous with Iran’s South Pars field, through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and on to Turkey, with a view to supply European markets – albeit crucially bypassing Russia. Assad’s rationale was ‘to protect the interests of [his] Russian ally, which is Europe’s top supplier of natural gas."
Note the purple line which traces the proposed Qatar-Turkey natural gas pipeline and note that all of the countries highlighted in red are part of a new coalition hastily put together after Turkey finally (in exchange for NATO’s acquiescence on Erdogan’s politically-motivated war with the PKK) agreed to allow the US to fly combat missions against ISIS targets from Incirlik. Now note which country along the purple line is not highlighted in red. That’s because Bashar al-Assad didn’t support the pipeline and now we’re seeing what happens when you’re a Mid-East strongman and you decide not to support something the US and Saudi Arabia want to get done. (Map: ZeroHedge.com)
Much of the strategy currently at play was described back in a 2008 U.S. Army-funded RAND report, “Unfolding the Future of the Long War”:
“The geographic area of proven oil reserves coincides with the power base of much of the Salafi-jihadist network. This creates a linkage between oil supplies and the long war that is not easily broken or simply characterized. … For the foreseeable future, world oil production growth and total output will be dominated by Persian Gulf resources. … The region will therefore remain a strategic priority, and this priority will interact strongly with that of prosecuting the long war.”
The report notes that another option would be “to take sides in the conflict, possibly supporting authoritative Sunni governments against a continuingly hostile Iran.”
This framework crafted an interesting axis: Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, U.S., Britain and France vs. Syria, Iran and Russia.
Divide and conquer: A path to regime change
With the U.S., France, Britain, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey — aka, the new “Friends of Syria” coalition — publicly calling for the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad between 2011 and 2012 after Assad’s refusal to sign onto the gas pipeline, the funds and arms flowing into Syria to feed the so-called “moderate” rebels were pushing Syria into a humanitarian crisis. Rebel groups were being organized left and right, many of which featured foreign fighters and many of which had allied with al-Qaida.
The Syrian government responded with a heavy hand, targeting rebel held areas and killing civilians in the process.
Since Syria is religiously diverse, the so-called “Friends of Syria” pushed sectarianism as their official “divide and conquer” strategy to oust Assad. Claiming that Alawites ruled over a majority Sunni nation, the call by the “moderate” U.S.-backed rebels became one about Sunni liberation.
Although the war is being sold to the public as a Sunni-Shiite conflict, so-called Sunni groups like ISIS, the Syrian al-Qaida affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra (the Nusra Front) and even the “moderate” Free Syrian Army have indiscriminately targeted Syria’s Sunnis, Shiites, Christians and Jews. At the same time, these same foreign nations supported and even armed the Bahraini government, which claims to be Sunni, in its violent crackdown on the majority Shiite pro-democracy demonstrations that swept the nation.
The Syrian government army itself is of over 80 percent Sunnis, which indicates that the true agenda has been politically — not religiously — motivated.
In addition to this, the Assad family is Alawite, an Islamic sect that the media has clumped in with Shiites, though most Shiites would agree that the two are unrelated. Further, the Assad family is described as secular and running a secular nation. Counting Alawites as Shiites was simply another way to push a sectarian framework for the conflict: It allowed for the premise that the Syria-Iran alliance was based on religion, when, in fact, it was an economic relationship.
This framework carefully crafted the Syrian conflict as a Sunni revolution to liberate itself from Shiite influence that Iran was supposedly spreading to Iraq, Syria and Lebanon.
But the truth is, Syria’s Sunni community is divided, and many defected to join groups like the Free Syrian Army, ISIS and al-Qaida. And as mentioned earlier, over 80 percent of Assad’s military is Sunni.
As early as 2012, additional rebels armed and financed by Arab Gulf nations and Turkey like al-Qaida and the Muslim Brotherhood, declared all-out war against Shiites. They even threatened to attack Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iraq’s government after they had overthrown the Assad government.
Soon after, the majority of the Muslim Brotherhood rebels became part of al-Qaida-affiliated groups. Together, they announced that they would destroy all shrines — not just those ones which hold particular importance to Shiites.
Hezbollah entered the scene in 2012 and allied itself with the Syrian government to fight al-Nusra and ISIS, which were officially being armed and financed by Qatar, Saudi Arabia and Turkey. And all the arms were actively being sold to these nations by the United States. Thus, US arms were falling into the hands of the same terror group the US claims to be fighting in its broader War on Terror.
According to reports, Hezbollah was and has been been active in preventing rebel penetration from Syria to Lebanon, “being one of the most active forces in the Syrian civil war spillover in Lebanon.” Despite this, the U.S. sanctioned both the Syrian government and Hezbollah in 2012.
Also that year, Russia and Iran sent military advisers to assist the Syrian government in quelling the terror groups, but Iranian troops were not on the ground fighting during this time.
What was once a secular, diverse and peaceful nation, was looking more like it was on its way to becoming the next Afghanistan; its people living under Taliban-style rule as jihadists took over more land and conquered more cities.
Effects of foreign meddling outweigh self-determination
If you think that was hard to follow, you’re certainly not alone.
Most sectarian civil wars are purposely crafted to pit sides against one another to allow for a “divide and conquer” approach that breaks larger concentrations of power into smaller factions that have more difficulty linking up. It’s a colonial doctrine that the British Empire famously used, and what we see taking place in Syria is no different.
So, let’s get one thing straight: This is not about religion. It might be convenient to say that Arabs or Muslims kill each other, and it’s easy to frame these conflicts as sectarian to paint the region and its people as barbaric. But this Orientalist, overly simplistic view of conflict in the Middle East dehumanizes the victims of these wars to justify direct and indirect military action.
If the truth was presented to the public from the perspective that these wars are about economic interests, most people would not support any covert funding and arming of rebels or direct intervention. In fact, the majority of the public would protest against war. But when something is presented to the public as a matter of good versus evil, we are naturally inclined to side with the “good” and justify war to fight off the supposed “evil.”
The political rhetoric has been carefully crafted to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable. Ultimately, no matter the agendas, the alliances or instability brought on by foreign meddling, the calls for freedom, democracy and equality that erupted in 2011 were real then and they’re real today. And let’s not forget that the lack of freedom, democracy and equality have been brought on more by foreign meddling to prop up brutal dictators and arm terror groups than by self-determination.
The people in the Middle East once stood united and strong together against foreign meddling, exploitation and colonialism no matter their religious or cultural background. But today, the Middle East is being torn to shreds by manipulative plans to gain oil and gas access by pitting people against one another based on religion. The ensuing chaos provides ample cover to install a new regime that’s more amenable to opening up oil pipelines and ensuring favorable routes for the highest bidders.
And in this push for energy, it’s the people who suffer most. In Syria, they are fleeing en masse. They’re waking up, putting sneakers on their little boys and girls, and hopping on boats without life jackets, hoping just to make it to another shore. They’re risking their lives, knowing full well that they may never reach that other shore, because the hope of somewhere else is better than the reality at home.
Here's Putin giving the lowdown on how ISIS came about and why they're getting stronger by the day:
[video=youtube;Ykb5sxTl1Rw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykb5sxTl1Rw[/video]
[video=youtube;Ykb5sxTl1Rw]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ykb5sxTl1Rw[/video]
The Paris Attacks: The real action is elsewhere – Syria.
Crimes against humanity: The Paris Attacks was pretext to invade Syria for oil and gas & to overrun pipelines through it: http://goo.gl/WjhIun
They want drive Assad away from Syria, even kill him.
Whenever the media booms out a big story look for the story that they are trying to distract you from
Culpable: Neo-colonialist powers.
Crimes against humanity: The Paris Attacks was pretext to invade Syria for oil and gas & to overrun pipelines through it: http://goo.gl/WjhIun
They want drive Assad away from Syria, even kill him.
Whenever the media booms out a big story look for the story that they are trying to distract you from
Culpable: Neo-colonialist powers.
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