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| Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. |
It is an indisputable fact that morale and ideology plays an
important role in the battle; moreover, we also know that the Takfiri brand of
most jihadists, these days, has directly been inspired by the puritanical
Wahhabi-Salafi ideology of Saudi Arabia, but ideology alone is not sufficient
to succeed in the battle.
Looking at Islamic State’s spectacular gains in Syria and
Iraq in the last couple of years, a question arises that where does its
recruits get all the training and state-of-the-art weapons that are imperative
not only for the hit-and-run guerrilla warfare but also for capturing and
holding vast swathes of territory?
The Syria experts of the foreign policy think tanks also seem
to be quite “worried,” these days, that where do Islamic State’s jihadists get
all the sophisticated weapons and especially those fancy white Toyota pick-up
trucks mounted with machine guns at the back, colloquially known as “The
Technicals” among the jihadists?
I think that I have found the answer to this riddle in an
unprecedented December 2013 news
report [1] from a website affiliated with the UAE government which supports
the Syrian Opposition: it is clearly mentioned that along with AK-47s, RPGs and
other military gear, the Saudi regime also provides machine gun-mounted Toyota
pick-up trucks to every batch of five jihadists who have completed their
training in the training camps located at the border regions of Jordan. Once
those militants cross over to Daraa and Quneitra in Syria from the Jordan-Syria
border then those Toyota pick-up trucks can easily travel all the way to Raqaa
and Deir ez-Zor and thence to Mosul and Anbar in Iraq.
Apart from training and arms which have been provided to the
militants in the training camps located on the Turkish and Jordanian border
regions adjacent to Syria by the CIA in collaboration with the Turkish,
Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies, another factor which has contributed
to the spectacular success of Islamic State is that its top cadres are
comprised of former Baathist military and intelligence officers of the Saddam era.
According to an informative Associated
Press report [2], hundreds of ex-Baathists constitute the top and mid-tier
command structure of Islamic State who plan all the operations and direct its
military strategy.
While we are on the subject of Islamic State’s weaponry, it
is generally claimed by the political commentators of the Western mainstream
media that Islamic State came into possession of those sophisticated weapons
when it overran Mosul in June 2014 and seized large caches of weapons that were
provided to the Iraqi Armed Forces by the Americans during the occupation
years.
On logical grounds, however, is it not a bit paradoxical that
Islamic State conquered large swathes of territory in Syria and Iraq before it
overran Mosul, when it supposedly did not had those sophisticated weapons, and
after allegedly coming into possession of those weapons it is continuously
losing ground? The only conclusion that can be drawn from this simple fact is
that Islamic State had those weapons, or equally deadly weapons, before it
overran Mosul in June 2014.
More to the point, only thing that differentiates Islamic
State from all other insurgent groups is its command structure which is
comprised of professional ex-Baathists and its state-of-the-art weaponry that
has been provided to all the Sunni Arab militant outfits that are fighting in
Syria by the intelligence agencies of the Western powers, Turkey, Jordan and
Saudi Arabia.
However, a number of Islamic State affiliates have recently
sprung up all over the Middle East and North Africa region that have no organizational
and operational association, whatsoever, with Islamic State proper in Syria and
Iraq, such as, the Islamic State affiliates in Afghanistan, Libya and even Boko
Haram in Nigeria now falls under the umbrella of Islamic State.
It’s understandable for the laymen to conflate such local
militant outfits for Islamic State proper but how come the policy analysts of
the think tanks and the corporate media’s spin-doctors, who are fully in the
know, have fallen for such a ruse? Can we categorize any ragtag militant outfit
as Islamic State merely on the basis of ideological affinity and “a letter of
accreditation” from Abu Bakr al Baghdadi without the Islamic State’s Baathist
command structure and superior weaponry that has been bankrolled
[3] by the Gulf’s petro-dollars?
The Western political establishments and their mouthpiece,
the mainstream media, deliberately and knowingly falls for such stratagems
because it serves the agenda of creating bogeymen after bogeymen to keep the
enterprise of Fear Inc. running. Before acknowledging Islamic State’s
affiliates in the region, the Western mainstream media also similarly and
“naively” acknowledged al Qaeda’s affiliates in the region, too, merely on the
basis of ideological affinity without any organizational and operational
association with al Qaeda Central, such as, al Qaeda in Arabian Peninsula, al
Qaeda in Iraq and al Qaeda in Islamic Maghreb.
Notwithstanding, in order to create a semblance of
objectivity and impartiality, the American policy makers and analysts are
always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that
have no bearing on their present policy, however, any fact that impinges on
their existing policy is conveniently brushed aside.
In the case of the formation of Islamic State, for instance,
the US’ policy analysts are willing to concede that invading Iraq back in 2003
was a mistake that radicalized the Iraqi society, exacerbated the sectarian
divisions and gave birth to an unrelenting Sunni insurgency against the heavy
handed and discriminatory policies of the Shi’a-dominated Iraqi government;
similarly, the “war on terror” era political commentators also “generously”
accept that the Cold War era policy of nurturing the al Qaeda, Taliban and
myriads of other Afghan militant groups against the erstwhile Soviet Union was
a mistake, because all those fait accompli have no bearing on their present
policy.
The corporate media’s spin-doctors conveniently forget,
however, that the formation of Islamic State and myriads of other Sunni Arab
jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has as much to do with the unilateral
invasion of Iraq back in 2003 under the previous Bush Administration as it is
the outcome of the present policy of Obama Administration in Syria of funding,
arming, training and internationally legitimizing the Sunni militants against
the Syrian regime since 2011-onward in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in
the Middle East and North Africa region. In fact, the proximate cause behind
the rise of Islamic State, al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, Jaysh al-Islam and
numerous other Sunni Arab militant groups in Syria and Iraq has been Obama
Administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.
Notwithstanding, fighting wars through proxies allows the
international power brokers the luxury of taking the plea of plausible
deniability in their defense and at the same time they can shift all the blame
for the wrongdoing on the minor regional players. The culpability of Western
powers lies in the fact that because of their self-serving policies, a system
of international justice based on sound principles of morality and justice
cannot be built on an international stage, in which the violators can be
punished for the wrongdoing and the victims of injustice and tyranny can be
protected.
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