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Controlling IS without bombing

Oct 02,2014 - Last updated at Oct 02,2014

A Western viewpoint (courtesy of Aubrey Bailey): “Some of our friends support our enemies, and some of our enemies are our friends, and some of our enemies are fighting against our other enemies whom we want to lose, but we don’t want our enemies who are fighting our enemies to win.

“If the people we want to defeat are defeated, they might be replaced by people we like even less. And all this was started by us, the West, invading a country to drive out terrorists who weren’t actually there until we went to drive them out.”

This is the conundrum that US President Barack Obama and his Western and Arab allies is facing in trying to defeat the so-called Islamic State.

Well, if the saying “My enemy’s enemy is my friend” is Arab, then the West has its saying: “When you are in a hole stop digging.”

The hole digging has been going on since president Jimmy Carter, persuaded by his national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, provided sophisticated armament to the mujahedin fighting the invading Soviet army in Afghanistan, back in the 1980s.

Not surprisingly, the arms of the mujahedin fell into the hands of the resurgent Taliban which protected Al Qaeda.

The American-led war in Afghanistan, spilling over into Pakistan, helped radicalise thousands of young people, in particular unemployed men. (Some of us have been preaching for over 40 years about the need to implement workable policies for defeating Third World unemployment through land reform and developing peasant agriculture.)

These young militants had not only fought in the insurgency in Kashmir, they had migrated to fight with the extreme militants fighting President Bashar  Assad’s regime in Syria.

There they learnt more of their trade by using the guns provided by the West and its Arab allies.

Now their struggle has spilled over into Iraq, where the US deposed the Sunni leader, the cruel dictator Saddam Hussein, who kept a lid on Sunni radicalism [and, let’s admit, gave the people economic and social security].

IS has created an Islamic “caliphate”, underpinned by help from disillusioned Iraqi Sunnis who have been alienated by the Shiite-dominated government in Baghdad, which the US left behind after a self-defeating military intervention.

Obama said on Sunday the US had “underestimated” the danger of IS. Now Obama and his allies are going full steam ahead to destroy IS before it attempts to take over the Middle East.

This division between Sunnis and Shiites has been going on since the early years after the death of the Prophet Mohammad. Nevertheless, it is not too late to repair the damage.

Wiser Sunni-led governments in the Middle East — Jordan, Qatar, the UAE and Saudi Arabia — realise that a perpetual Sunni-Shiite war is threatening the whole Middle East. They have signed up for Obama’s war.

But why are the US and its NATO allies going to war?

Every time the West got militarily involved in this part of the world — Palestine, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya — it backfired, radicalising more people, creating more enemies not less.

Deep down Obama knows this.

A couple of months ago he said he had begun to think that the West’s means of involvement in the Libyan civil war three years ago was perhaps a mistake, now that he sees the country in chaos. 

It was partly this thinking that pulled him back at the last minute from bombing the Assad regime of Syria.

There are other ways apart from war to cut IS down to size: sanctions that make sure that its funding is cut off and its leaders cannot travel or use banks, and the defensive deployment of Iraqi troops to protect the revenue-giving oil wells and Iraq’s heavy armament. (Don’t ask the Iraqi army to go on the offensive, it is incapable of that.)

At the same time, the West needs to continue with its so far successful efforts to stymie terrorist activity back home.

There has not been a major terrorist outrage in the West since September 11, the bus bombing in London in 2005 and the train bombing in Madrid in 2006.

As for new moves, it should cancel the passports of those jihadists residents in the West who have gone to fight. Stateless, no country in the world would give them entry. They would pay the price of never seeing their families again.

Russia and Iran would support this. They should get onside.

IS should be encircled and squeezed. The towns IS occupies should empty out and their inhabitants should be encouraged to head for refuge in Turkey and Iran. Then IS should be denied food, and its water and electricity should be cut off.

The West must learn to be clever, not to bomb. That will only make a bad situation worse.

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