Atlas Monitor | 1 March 2015
ISIS is the direct consequence of Western foreign policy and meddling in the region. However, I would take it a step further and emphasize the covert support Western powers have given radical groups such as ISIS.
This news article from FARS News Agency (Iran); Iraqi Army Downs 2 UK Planes Carrying Weapons for ISIL, I think ought to be investigated by those opposed to NZ’s deployment to Iraq.
It quotes Iraqi government officials who are adamant that the US-UK led coalition, created ostensibly to combat ISIS, are in fact giving ISIS material support. I have read similar articles.
[UPDATE: Iraq’s Popular Forces Release Photo of Downed US Chopper Carrying Arms for ISIL]
Although it might seem unlikely or counterintuitive for the US and UK to give ISIS support, the historical record demonstrates that Western regimes have used radical groups to pursue hidden geopolitical agendas.
This has been a policy that goes all the way back to WWI and the Arab Revolt that saw the fall of the Ottoman Empire and the carving up of the Middle-East by Western powers. This policy was perfected, under the Brzezinski-Carter doctrine, during the war in Afghanistan in the 1970-80s; it was evident during the war in Yugoslavia with Western support for Bosnian-Muslim militants and the KLA.
More recently the CIA has been training anti-Assad fighters at military bases in Jordan and Turkey who have joined ISIS. The so-called ‘Free Syrian Army’ is essentially a façade that provides plausible deniability and limited accountability for a covert rat-line that funnels support to ISIS and associated groups.
The anti-ISIS coalition does not seek to destroy ISIS but rather to exploit it.
Here is a sample of the US foreign policy establishment’s attitude towards radical-insurgent groups such as al-Qaeda-ISIS. Ed Husain, Adjunct Senior Fellow for the Middle Eastern Studies at the US Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) writes:
The Syrian rebels would be immeasurably weaker today without al-Qaeda in their ranks. By and large, Free Syrian Army (FSA) battalions are tired, divided, chaotic, and ineffective. Feeling abandoned by the West, rebel forces are increasingly demoralized as they square off with the Assad regime’s superior weaponry and professional army. Al-Qaeda fighters, however, may help improve morale. The influx of jihadis brings discipline, religious fervor, battle experience from Iraq, funding from Sunni sympathizers in the Gulf, and most importantly, deadly results. In short, the FSA needs al-Qaeda now.
Gary Gambill, wrote an article for Foreign Policy entitled “Two Cheers for Syrian Islamists” says:
So the rebels aren’t secular Jeffersonians. As far as America is concerned, it doesn’t much matter.
I think that questioning the real motives and agenda behind the intervention to combat ISIS, which is to effectively give covert support to ISIS in the overthrow of the Assad regime, will ultimately undermine the argument for deployment.