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The hard lessons of global militarism

Oct 01,2015 - Last updated at Oct 01,2015

The bizarre, often make-believe, world of the United States’ fight against dangerous terrorist organisations and militants has suffered a bad few weeks, and there are no signs of things getting better soon.

This is a critical moment in that tug-of-war between those around the world who call on the United States to assist or protect them from dangerous foes, and others who say the US is not a reliable partner because broadly it does not know what it is doing when it sends its military into action in distant lands.

Three simultaneous developments this month support those who distrust the United States or see it as incompetent in foreign military action.

The first was the announcement by the US Defence Department that it only had 60 trained Syrian soldiers in the field fighting against Daesh, after Congress last summer allocated over $500 million to train thousands of “moderate” Syrians to join this battle.

Of the 60 that were prepared and sent to fight, the majority were killed or captured, and only five or six remained at their posts last week.

In one case, some of the American-supplied equipment and supplies with these troops ended up with the local Al Qaeda affiliate, Jabhat Al Nusra.

The second embarrassing news was the revelation in a New York Times article earlier this week of a confidential report being prepared by American intelligence analysts, which reportedly concludes that “nearly 30,000 foreign fighters have travelled to Iraq and Syria from more than 100 countries since 2011. A year ago, the same officials estimated that flow to be about 15,000 combatants from 80 countries, mostly to join the Islamic State”.

The report suggests that around 1,000 fighters from all parts of the world are travelling to join Daesh every month. So the US government claim to have killed 10,000 Daesh fighters or personnel during the last year of military bombardments seems to have done no irreparable damage to either Daesh’ ability to maintain its control in the areas it rules in Syria and Iraq or to its fighting capabilities.

This is more of an indictment of the governments of the countries neighbouring Daesh, especially Syria and Iraq, than of the United States, as one would expect the local powers that are threatened by Daesh to be the main ones fighting.

The combination of incompetence of the governments in the Middle East and limited impact of the American air strikes is doubly shocking and depressing.

The third nasty development for the anti-terror and anti-Islamist militancy forces was the news this week that the Taliban in Afghanistan have taken control of the strategic northern town of Kunduz.

This would be the first provincial capital that the Taliban has recaptured since the US invasion in 2001 drove it from power.

The resurgence of the Taliban in numbers and organisational capabilities that allow it to seize provincial capitals suggests that all the money and effort the United States and NATO allies put into the battle against the Taliban — not to mention the 2,361 dead Americans and over 20,000 others injured in the last 13 years — have not been able to put the Taliban out of business.

These three developments can be interpreted in many ways, and some of them may be reversed in time, though I doubt that very much.

I suspect we are witnessing the totally expected consequences of a major Western power sending its armed force into battles in faraway lands where it is almost totally oblivious to the issues that drive citizens to join militant organisations like Al Qaeda, Daesh or the Taliban.

The fundamental problem for the US government is usually twofold. First, its military’s use of massive power often causes immense destruction that breeds resentment against the US and weakens the local governance structures, which drives many ordinary but desperate citizens in Syria, Iraq or Afghanistan into the arms of the militant Islamists who promise order and a better day ahead.

Second, the US usually supports corrupt and authoritarian local governments that end up enriching a small circle of their friends and business associates, while hardly touching the miserable living conditions and life prospects of millions of ordinary citizens.

So it is no surprise that we witness mostly failure, to date, in the American attempts to train “moderate” Syrian rebels, quell the flow of recruits to Daesh or free Afghanistan from the grip of the Taliban.

These are not necessarily America’s wars, and many other people are primarily to blame for the atrocious conditions in these and other countries.

 

But one thing is certain, and is being confirmed again and again: A bad local situation is always made far worse when American or other foreign powers send in their armed forces and open fire at will, because they shatter the local political landscapes as well as the thin credibility of the US as a useful or reliable partner.

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