The US President Barrack Obama admitted
during a CBS interview that the United States underestimated the
opportunity that a war-torn Syria would provide for the comeback of
extremist militant groups. He defined Iraq and Syria as "ground zero for
jihadists around the world".
According to Obama, the head of the Us
intelligence community, Jim Clapper, has acknowledged that they
underestimated what had been going on in Syria. [1]
At the beginning of September Obama had
also claimed that "the war on ISIS would last at least 3 years" and a
few weeks later the Senate passed a bill authorizing Obama to begin
arming "moderate" rebels in Syria as part of a plan to step up the US
military campaign against ISIS militants.
The bill allocates $500 million not only
to the arming and training of Syrian rebels, but also to the expansion
of US military action in Iraq. Included in the bill is also the
extension of US government funding until December 11.
In the meantime the coalition, which
includes the US, UK, France, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United Arab
Emirates, have begun the airstrikes against Isis targets in Syria and
Iraq.
Initially, Barrack Obama had claimed
that no US troops would be deployed on the ground but after several US
and UK military chiefs explained how the air strikes have very limited
use without ground control, Obama is now rethinking his whole
"non-strategy" and he is staring to contradict himself once again.
Obama's Middle East policies have been
one huge contradiction which led to total failure; although the US
administration has now reached claims that are hard to believe even for
those who have minimum knowledge about foreign affairs.
The US intelligence apparently
underestimated the collateral effects of arming those who have been
defined as "moderate Syrian rebels" but in the meantime the Senate
approves a bill to arm such rebels. It seems that they still haven't
learnt the lesson.
In addition the US also plans to expand
military operation in Iraq after two wars that brought the country into
total anarchy and it is more than realistic to believe that there is a
similar aim towards Syria, in order to destabilize Assad.
The mystery of Isis and Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi
According to Obama, it will take at
least three years to defeat that Islamic State which literally popped
out of nowhere; in less than one year the group managed to take control
of great part of Syria and Iraq. Its militants defeated a well-armed
Iraqi army that was trained and equipped for years by the US forces,
stealing all their vehicles and weapons; although the US did not expect
that the Iraqi army would simply run away once confronted by the
jihadists.
Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the strange Isis
leader, was a well-known preacher already in 2003, when the US invaded
Iraq for the second time and he immediately joined Abu Musab
al-Zarqawi's "al-Qaeda Iraq" with the task of infiltrating Arab
jihadists inside Iraq.
Strangely enough, al-Baghdadi, who was
famous for his passion for public execution, was arrested by US forces
and locked inside the Camp Bucca detention facility but not in the
compound where the dangerous jihadists were detained. Strangely enough,
he was not considered dangerous at all.
In 2009, al-Baghdadi is freed by the US forces and the following year, on May 16th
2010, he is appointed leader of the Islamic State of Iraq, replacing
Abu Omar al-Baghdadi. As a consequence, the attacks towards Shia and
Christian targets throughout Iraq drastically increased.
In 2011 Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi became one of the top wanted terrorists by the US Department of State, with a 10$ million reward.
Foreign fighters and Western intelligence
The US and EU intelligence community
were also surprised by the fact that thousands of EU citizens suddenly
began flowing towards the Middle East to join jihadists? Is it really
credible?
According to statistics there are
approximately 700 French citizens, 500 British, 300 from Belgium and
Germany, 100 from Denmark. In some cases jihadists even managed to
return from Syria and conduct attacks in their home countries, such as
French-Algerian Mehdi Nemmouche, who shot against the Jewish museum of
Brussels on May 24, 2014, killing four people.
In the UK, pro-Caliphate preachers, such
as Anjem Choudary, have been allowed to freely preach extremist views
for years without any type of measure on behalf of local authorities.
According to Belgian authorities
Choudary, who was finally arrested last week in the UK, closely
cooperated with Fouad Belkacem, the spokesman of Sharia4Belgium, a now
disbanded Salafist organization that wanted sharia law adopted in
Belgium. Belkacem is currently serving a jail term for inciting hatred
against non-Muslims.
Another interesting element recently
came up in connection to the beheadings carried out by ISIS. The
suspected man who appears in such videos could be Abdel Majed Abdel
Bary, who was only six years old when his father was arrested and taken
away from their London home, accused of being one of Osama Bin Laden's
lieutenants in Britain and who played a role in the bombings of two US
embassies in east Africa in 1998.
While his father, Egyptian-born refugee
Adel Abdul Bary, is in custody in New York, awaiting trial over his
alleged role in the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, Majed lived
with his mother and five siblings in a home in Maida Vale, west London,
owned by Westminster Council, and on the open market would be worth £1
million ($1.8 million), according to British media reports. An issue
that obviously raises many questions.
The issue of funds
According to documentation released by
the Center for Research on Globalization, the Islamic State of Iraq and
Syria (ISIS), now threatening Baghdad, was funded for years by wealthy
donors in Kuwait, Qatar, and Saudi Arabia, three U.S. allies that have
dual agendas in the war on terror. It is interesting to notice how Saudi
Arabia and Qatar are now participating in the air strike-coalition.
"The extremist group that is threatening
the existence of the Iraqi state was built and grown for years with the
help of elite donors from American supposed allies in the Persian Gulf
region. There, the threat of Iran, Assad, and the Sunni-Shiite sectarian
war trumps the U.S. goal of stability and moderation in the region". [2]
The objective seems clear, breaking the
"Shia axis" that goes from Iran, through Iraq and Syria, all the way to
Lebanon in order to contrast the Iranian influence in the Gulf. A
primary task for Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Kuwait.
[2] http://www.globalresearch.ca/isis-made-in-usa-iraq-geopolitical-arsonists-seek-to-burn-region/5387475
Giovanni
Giacalone
is an Italian researcher and analyst in Islamic radicalism, lives in
Milan where he studies political Islam in Europe with a
close look at issues linked to integration, radicalism and relations
between
the various European Institutions and the Islamic organizations present
in Europe.
Source: http://english.pravda.ru/world/asia/30-09-2014/128648-isis-0/#
