Islamic State: How Arab autocrats, Israeli terror state and Western plutocrats made it in Syria

The enemy of your enemy is your friend: this is the enduring wisdom all over the world. But the problem starts when the enemy-friend is a barbarous creature. But after you nurture a venomous snake over years and decades, can you legitimately ask it to restrain from spewing venom? Apparently not. But the West is trying to do this very thing in Iraq and Syria today.

In the inferno that the Western Asia has become today, it is easy to overlook the vested interests of US and Israel in perpetuating the cycle of violence. Indeed no MSM will ever elaborate how precisely US, Britain or Israel have contributed to the creation of the monster called IS. 

But truth does not stop being truth by not being told. It may well hide in the background but someone or the other will be tempted to call it by the name. The Machiavellian tactic of the West and the Arab dictators in creating and then slaying the enemies so as to continuously subjugate the people with fear and ferocity seems working perfectly so far. And there are no signs things will change anytime soon.

So what can we do in the meantime? Merely watch this drama from sides doing nothing? Well, our deeds may not contribute in any way to alleviate the sufferings of the people propelled to the inferno mercilessly but at least we can talk, whisper or write about the truth. Here is one more illustrious piece from Sadiq. 


Syrian Jihad spawned the Islamic State

Nauman Sadiq

Let me admit at the outset that Assad is an illegitimate tyrant who must abdicate his hereditary throne to the will of the people when the opportune moment arrives. But at the moment our primary concern shouldn’t be bringing democracy to Syria; at the moment our first and foremost priority should be reducing the level of violence in Syria. There are two parties to this conflict: the regime and the rebels (the majority of whom are takfiri jihadis). It is not possible for the regime to deescalate the conflict because it is holding a tiger by the tail. The regime is fighting a war of defense; and what is at stake in this war is its survival; not only its survival but the survival of its clan: the Alawite minority of 2.6 million people who comprise 12% population of Syria’s 22 million people.

The second party to the conflict is the rebels who are generously supported by the Gulf monarchies, Turkey (Sunni Muslims), Western powers and Israel. Don’t get alarmed and be dismissive of the possibility of an alliance [1] between the Sunni Muslims of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan, Turkey and the Zionists of Israel. It is realpolitik: the enemy of my enemy is my friend. In fact the Western interest in this war is partly about Israel’s regional security [2] because the Shia axis comprising Iran-Syria-Hezbollah is an existential threat to Israel; and with each passing year the nature of this threat will enhance proportionally with the increased sophistication of Iranian missile program. During the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah conflict in Lebanon, most of the rockets fired by Hezbollah into the Israeli territory missed their target; but according to some reports Iran and Hezbollah have already developed smarter missiles and with every passing year the threat of Hezbollah’s guided missiles so close to Israeli borders will keep on haunting the Israeli strategists’ dreams.

Terror and counter-terror: It is more than meets the eyes

By Nauman Sadiq

On terrorism, it is more than it meets the eyes. But being bombarded day in and day out by the 'Responsibility to protect' and 'Humanitarian intervention' jargon, the real narrative of the terrorist activities and so called counter-terrorism measures is just missing from public discourse.

So, why is The West ready to pick new fight with a bunch of terrorists calling themselves the 'Caliphate'? Are the motives really altruistic as is often depicted in MSM?

Definitely not, says Sadiq, known for his insinuations to the psychological aspects of the contemporary developments in the world. Here he delves into how the economic and other factors force the hands of the western powers into the different parts of the world not necessarily rich in fossil fuels. 


Terrorism as pretext for intervention

Nauman Sadiq

The fear of terrorism is partly a fact and partly a hype to militarily intervene in the oil-rich Middle East. Obviously, any incident of terrorism is a big human tragedy in which many innocent human lives are lost and governments all over the world try to avert such an incident from happening. But the actions of the governments, and their proportionality, needs to be carefully examined to judge their real intentions. Can it be said about General Zia-ul-Haq’s regime that it felt a genuine love and affection towards its brothers-in-faith; and that’s why the Pakistani military establishment chose to give refuge to the Afghans and then equipped and trained them to ‘liberate’ their homeland from the clutches of an ‘evil empire?’ Even the naivest amongst us won’t believe a word of what I just said, but some Pakistani tea partyers might.

So why did Pakistani military oligarchy decided to intervene in Afghanistan? Was it to strengthen its defenses against India, the oft-quoted strategic depth theory; or, the fear that the erstwhile Soviet Union might make further advance into Balochistan to reach the warm waters of the Arabian sea? These factors may have played a part; but to understand the real reason why Pakistan decided to intervene in the Afghan conflict; we need to understand the nature of power. Power ought to be means to attain higher goals; but in the real life we often face the is-ought dilemma; where, rather than being means to an end, the power becomes an end in itself; and it is the nature of power to expand further and to grow even more powerful. Thus, the Pakistani Establishment didn’t collaborate with the Western powers’ ‘bear-trap project’ for any ulterior strategic goals; the goal was only to ‘exercise’ power by taking advantage of the opportunity provided to them, goal or no goal.

To elaborate this abstract concept; I would like to draw a parallel between power and sex. In the grand scheme of things, sex is not an end in itself; it is means to an end, the end being the procreation of the offspring. But most modern hedonic couples use contraceptives and don’t consider it worthwhile to procreate and nurture offspring, due to the material constraints or the unnecessary effort which it entails. We, the social scientists, have no business to offer advice or moral lessons; to each his own. But if the ultimate end for which the grand schemers invented the agency, comes to a naught; that does not per se render the agency any less significant; instead the agency itself becomes an ultimate end, and quite a potent one for that matter. Thus power is like sex; its exercise is pleasurable and its goal is further expansion and more arrogation of power to satisfy the needs of insatiable power-maniacs.

Many Leftists and anti-imperialists these days, commit the fallacy of trying to establish an essentialist and linear narrative to the global events. One cannot question their bona fide intentions; but their overzealous efforts sometimes prove counter-productive to their own credibility and the cause that they strive for. All the conflicts of the 21st century were not energy-wars. Iraq and Libya were obviously energy-wars because Iraq has proven oil reserves of 140 billion barrels and it produces 3 million barrels per day (and has a capacity to reach 5 mbpd in a few years comparable only to Saudi Arabia’s 10 million bpd or 15% of global supply) and Libya produces 1.6 mbpd. The Syrian conflict has a different dimension to it; it does not produce much oil except some 400,000 barrels per day from the north-east Syria which is territorially contiguous with Iraq. NATO’s involvement in the Syrian conflict is for the sake of Israel’s regional security because the Shia axis: Iran, Syria and Hezbollah have a known anti-Zionist stance. A likely scenario for any future government in Syria would be an Islamist-dominated government; but a weak Islamist government in Syria riddled with internal conflicts is a lesser evil compared to a strong Assad regime which has a backing of powerful global and regional actors like Russia and Iran and which also has an active proxy force in Lebanon in the form of Hezbollah.

Imran Khan's momentous gamble: Why Pakistan is wrong to emulate Egypt and not Turkey

Nauman Sadiq

PTI chief Imran Khan and the PAT chief Tahirul Qadri are arguably at the driving seats of Pakistan now; where they'll lead this beleaguered South Asian country is, though, anybody's guess. And the scene of the powerful army being dragged into a confrontation between political powers does not seem pretty from Kathmandu.  

So what is IK, so widely admired and more if not equally loathed, up to, after all? What is the source of his 'unscrupulous pragmatism' that has so badly threatened a democratically elected government? In this insightful piece written before the current 'revolution' started, Sadiq gives a crucial background as to how IK landed the country as well as himself in a difficult situation. 

Imran Khan: A pragmatist par excellence

Rather than the Turkish establishment where Erdogan has clipped the wings of Kemalist generals, it appears that the Pakistani establishment is taking its cue from the Egyptian establishment. Egyptian army has massacred hundreds of Muslim Brotherhood supporters, handed down heavy sentences to hundreds more and imprisoned the entire leadership and thousands of MB supporters, yet the international community did nothing except making some symbolic gestures. This precedent has emboldened the establishment in Pakistan to act with impunity.

Before psycho-analyzing Imran Khan’s colorful personality and determining that where does PTI stands in the Pakistani political spectrum: whether it’s a center-left (liberal) or a center-right (conservative) party, let us first draw a distinction between politics and culture: a democratic system of governance falls in the category of politics while liberalism as a value-system falls in the category of culture.

When we say that Islam and democracy are incompatible, we make a category mistake as big as the Islamists’ misperception that democracy is un-Islamic. They too mix up democracy with liberalism. Here let me concede that there is some friction between liberalism as a culture and Islam as a religion. But democracy isn’t about religion or culture. It is simply a multi-party representative political system that confers legitimacy upon a government which comes to power through an election process which is a contest between more than one political parties, to ensure that it is voluntary. Thus, democracy and politics is about matters of governance and economics while culture is about the socio-moral values and the kind of social matrix that we, as individuals and families, want around us. There is some overlapping between politics and culture but as an heuristic principle this distinction holds true.

When I discuss the political pragmatism of PTI, the reader will further appreciate the fact that realpolitik is mostly about power and rarely about cultural matters. Let us admit at the outset that Imran Khan is an educated, well-informed, articulate and charismatic leader. Being an Oxford graduate he is better informed than our local politicians. And he is a liberal at heart. Most readers won’t agree due to his strong anti-imperialism and the West-bashing demagoguery but I’ll try to explain. Like I said earlier that there is a difference between politics and culture; anti-imperialism is a political stance and liberalism is a cultural temperament. There is a theory called Reflective equilibrium. It states that our minds try to create a harmony between our different sets of beliefs and actions. If there is a divergence between our beliefs and actions, it leads to cognitive dissonance. To avoid this dissonance we try to attune our beliefs and ideology to bring them in conformity with our actions and vice versa.

Now if Imran Khan is a conservative-Islamist, his mind must be a psychological singularity. A playboy-cricketer turned politician who spent most of his youth in the West chasing famous celebrities all over the world, how could he be an Islamist or a conservative? How would his mind create a reflective equilibrium between his beliefs and his adulterous actions? It is just not possible for him to be an Islamist or a conservative. The only ideology that suits his temperament and past actions is the freewheeling liberalism. A clarification here is needed. When I say that he is not an Islamist, I mean that he is not a political Islamist and I am not questioning his personal faith as a Muslim. He seems like a secular Muslim.

The West's double game: Nurturing Petro-Islamic Terror for vested interests

Nauman Sadiq

The US first nurtured the Taliban. The Taliban devastated Afghanistan over a decade. Again came the US to 'fight' Taliban and completed the devastation. That was not enough: they moved to Iraq and devastated it. Then came Libya, Yemen, Syria and so on. Landscapes were flattened; blood flowed in the streets. Even the US proxies like Saudi Arabia became bold enough to send tanks to cull the unarmed protesters at neighborhood. One with a clear vision and working ears can see and hear all this.

Or does everybody? Do our dear mainstream media outlets let the information (that matters) to flow freely? Absolutely not. The era of apparent over-information has been so abjectly the hostage of distorted information--when it concerns to these issues of prime importance--that one feels like admiring the then USSR for its poorly executed media censorship. In a sense, we are blind and deaf with working eyes and ears.

In this mess, here I received this submission of an extremely well-articulated article from Sadiq from Pakistan. Besides stating the obvious from past, he relates how the latest series of tragedy from Iraq to Libya and Syria to Yemen is the continuation of the double game of The West. You may say the things will remain the same whether we decry these evil deeds or not; but in a world replete with absurdly distorted mass communication, there are people who have managed to keep their sanity intact and looking for real and informative materials. Here goes one. 

Western complicity in nurturing Islamic Extremism

The mainspring of Islamic extremism and militancy is not the democratic political Islam, because why would people turn to violence when they can exercise their choice to vote their rulers in and also to vote them out? The mainspring of Islamic militancy is the despotic political Islam of the Gulf variety. The Western powers are fully cognizant of the reality that the mainstream Muslim sentiment is firmly against the US intervention in the Middle Eastern affairs, especially after the end of Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union, when the US after defeating a staunch rival turned its guns against the Muslim world in order to further exploit their energy resources. 

In its July 2013 report [1] the European Parliament identified the Wahabi-Salafi roots of global terrorism, but the report conveniently absolved the Western powers of their culpability and chose to overlook the Western complicity in nurturing Islamic extremism and violent Jihadism all over the Islamic world during the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union; and even today, in the Libyan Jihad against the Qaddafi regime in 2011; and the Syrian Jihad against the Alawi (Shia) Assad regime. This is the principal thesis of this write-up which I will discuss in detail in the following paragraphs.

In my previous write-up: The role of Saudi Arabia, as de facto Caliphs of Islam, in sponsoring Islamic extremism and violent Jihadism [2] I stated that an exponential growth in the phenomena of petro-Islamic extremism can directly be attributed to the generous funding of the Islamic charities and madrassahs all over the Islamic world by the Gulf countries after the 1973 oil embargo when the price of oil quadrupled and the Arab Sheikhs’ contribution to the spiritual ‘well-being’ of the Muslims increased proportionally.

Peaceful or not, Islam is only a religion just like any other religion whether it’s Christianity, Buddhism or Hinduism. Instead of taking an ‘essentialist’ approach, which lays emphasis on ‘essences,’ we need to look at the evolution of social phenomena in its historical context. For instance: to assert that human beings are evil by ‘nature’ is an essentialist approach; it overlooks the role played by ‘nurture’ in grooming humans. Human beings are only ‘intelligent’ by nature, but they are neither good nor evil by nature; whatever they are, good or evil, is the outcome of their nurture or upbringing. Similarly, to pronounce that Islam is a retrogressive or violent religion is an ‘essentialist’ approach; it overlooks how Islam and the Quranic verses are interpreted by its followers depending on the subject's cultural context. The Western expat Muslim would interpret a Quranic verse in a liberal fashion; and urban-Pakistani Muslim would interpret the same verse differently; and a rural-tribal Muslim would find meaning in it which could be extreme. It is all about culture rather than religion or scriptures per se.

Moreover, I said that Islam is only a religion ‘just like any other religion.’ But certain reductive neo-liberals blame the religion, as an institution and ideology, for all that is wrong with the world. I have not read much history, I am only a humble student of international politics; that’s why I don’t know what the Crusades and the Spanish Inquisition were all about? Although, I have a gut feeling that those were also political conflicts which are presented to us in a religious guise. However, I am certain that all the conflicts of the 20^th and 21^st centuries were either nationalist (tribal) conflicts; or they had economics and power as their goals. Examples: First and Second World Wars; Korea and Vietnam wars; Afghanistan and Iraq wars; and Libya and Syria wars.

When the neo-liberals commit the fallacy of blaming religion for all our woes, I am not sure which ancient global order they conjure up in their minds, the Holy Roman Empire perhaps? Religion may have been a paramount factor in the ancient times, if at all, but the contemporary politics is all about economics and power: the Western corporations rule the world, and politics and diplomacy is all about protecting the trade and energy interests of the Corporate Empire.

Dissecting 'Islamic' extremism: The Saudi role

How Saudi Petrodollar plays determinant role in spreading, sustaining and multiplying religious fanaticism and extremism around the globe

The author

Opinion

By Nauman Sadiq

It has been tempting to attach the word 'Muslim' to terrorism in much of the western world. It is often forgotten, rather deliberately, that the Al Qaeda and Taliban are but a fringe elements in the Muslim world. The narrative which places the entire Muslim population as a potential if not present day threats to the security of the others has given rise to a dangerous form of Islamophobia in many parts of the world.

So what is the so called Islamic extremism and terrorism? How was it borne and how is it sustained in today's world? What were and are the geopolitical realities-- though downplayed by the mainstream media in the world-- that decide the trajectory of forces like Taliban and Al Qaeda? To be frank, the people all over world have been more misinformed than informed on these issues by the mainstream media. In this highly insightful piece, Nauman Sadiq pointedly explains how the state of Saudi Arabia has been at the center of extremism and fanaticism that goes in the name of Islam. This post, also carried by Asia Times Online earlier this week, is his first in this blog and was taken from the author's blog with his permission.