The Three-way Tug of War that’s Pulling Syria Apart

Last month, the Islamic State recaptured Palmyra from where it was evicted by the Syrian army only in March; and this week, the Islamic State has launched a fierce assault in the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, near Syria’s border with Iraq, and has successfully managed to surround the military airport, thus cutting off food supplies to the besieged city.

Although the Syria experts of the mainstream media are claiming that the Islamic State’s jihadists from the Anbar province of Iraq have crossed over from the border to reinforce the militants in Palmyra and Deir Ezzor, but we should keep in mind that Ramadi was liberated in December 2015 and Fallujah in June last year. Why did it take the Islamic State’s jihadists several months to recapture Palmyra and mount an assault in Deir Ezzor when the aforementioned cities in eastern Syria are located only a few hours’ drive from Anbar in Iraq across a highly porous border?

The Russian defense ministry, by contrast, has given the explanation that thousands of Islamic State jihadists have crossed over to eastern provinces of Syria from Mosul in Iraq; and several analysts have blamed the US for not doing enough to prevent the reinforcements reaching to eastern Syria from Iraq, because the preference of the US seems to be to drive out jihadists from Iraq but letting them give a hard time to the government troops in Syria.

The Syrian civil war is actually a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arab militants, the Shi’a Arab regime and the Syrian Kurds. And the net beneficiaries of this conflict have only been the Syrian Kurds who have expanded their area of control by cleverly aligning themselves first with the Syrian regime against the Sunni Arab militants since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to August 2014 when the US declared a war against one faction of the Sunni Arab militants, i.e. the Islamic State, after the latter overran Mosul in June 2014; and then the Syrian Kurds aligned themselves with the US against the Islamic State, thus further buttressing their position against the Sunni Arab militants as well as the Syrian regime.

Although the Sunni Arab militants have also scored numerous victories in their battle against the Shi’a regime, but their battlefield victories have mostly been ephemeral. They have already been evicted from Ramadi and Fallujah in Iraq and their withdrawal from Mosul, against the Iraqi armed forces with American air and logistical support, is only a matter of time.

In Syria, the Sunni Arab militants have already been routed from east Aleppo by the Syrian government troops with Russian air support. Although a faction of Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, is still occupying Raqqa and Palmyra in eastern Syria, but it’s obvious that the Islamic State is going to lose Raqqa to the Syrian Kurds and Palmyra to the Syrian government troops sooner or later.

The only permanent gains of the Sunni Arab militants would be Idlib in western Syria, Daraa and Quneitra in southern Syria; and a few areas in northwestern Syria, like al-Bab, which might change hands from the Islamic State to the relatively moderate factions of the Sunni Arab militants through Turkish arbitration.

Notwithstanding, the only difference between the Soviet-Afghan jihad that spawned the Islamic jihadists like the Taliban and al Qaeda for the first time in history, and the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, 2011-onward, is that the Afghan jihad was an overt jihad; back then the Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, used to openly brag that the CIA provides all those AK-47s, RPGs and stingers to the Pakistani intelligence agencies, which then distributes those deadly weapons among the Afghan mujahideen (freedom fighters) to combat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

After the 9/11 tragedy, however, the Western political establishments and corporate media have become a lot more circumspect, therefore this time around, they have waged covert jihads against the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Zionist Assad regime in Syria, in which the Islamic jihadists have been sold as “moderate rebels,” with secular and nationalist ambitions, to the Western audience.

Since the regime change objective in those hapless countries went against the mainstream narrative of ostensibly fighting a war against terror, therefore the Western political establishments and the mainstream media are now trying to muddle the reality by offering color-coded schemes to identify myriads of militant and terrorist outfits that are operating in those countries: such as, the red militants of the Islamic State, which the Western powers want to eliminate; the yellow Islamic jihadists, like Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, with whom the Western powers can collaborate under desperate circumstances; and the green militants of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and a few other inconsequential outfits, which together comprise the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition.

If we were to draw parallels between the Soviet-Afghan jihad of the ‘80s and the Syrian civil war of today, the Western powers used the training camps located in the Af-Pak border regions to train and arm the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.

Similarly, the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan are being used to provide money, training and arms to the Syrian militants to battle the Syrian regime with the support of Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies.

During the Afghan jihad, it is a known historical fact, that the bulk of the so-called “freedom fighters” was comprised of Pashtun Islamic jihadists, such as the factions of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf and scores of others, some of which later coalesced together to form the Taliban movement.

Similarly, in Syria, the bulk of the so-called “moderate opposition” is comprised of Islamic jihadists, like the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham and myriads of other militant groups, including a small portion of defected Syrian soldiers that goes by the name of the Free Syria Army (FSA.)

Moreover, apart from Pashtun Islamic jihadists, the various factions of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks constituted the relatively “moderate” segment of the Afghan rebellion, though those “moderate” warlords, like Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abul Rashid Dostum, were more ethnic and tribal in their character than secular or nationalist, as such.

Similarly, the Kurds of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces can be compared with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan. The socialist PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria, however, had been allied with the Shi’a regime against the Sunni Arab jihadists for the first three years of the Syrian civil war, i.e. from August 2011 to August 2014, as I have already mentioned.

At the behest of the American stooge in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, the Syrian Kurds have switched sides in the last couple of years after the United States’ policy reversal and declaration of war against one faction of the Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, when the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in June 2014.

However, the reports of infiltration of the Islamic State’s jihadists from Iraq into eastern Syria by the Russian defense ministry sources lend credence to the suspicion that although the US seems sincere in driving out jihadists from Iraq, but it is still playing the double game of using the Sunni Arab militants to weaken the Syrian regime.

NATO’s Playbook of Proxy Wars in the Middle East

Since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of the master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Chechnya, Bosnia, Libya or Syria, the same playbook has been executed to the letter.

More to the point, raising funds for proxy wars from the Gulf Arab States allows the Western executives the freedom to evade congressional scrutiny; the benefit of buying weapons from the unregulated arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe is that such weapons cannot be traced back to the Western capitals; and using jihadist proxies to achieve strategic objectives has the advantage of taking the plea of plausible deniability if the strategy backfires, which it often does. Remember that al-Qaeda and Taliban were the by-products of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Islamic State and its global network of terrorists is the blowback of the proxy war in Syria.

Notwithstanding, the Western interest in the Syrian civil war has mainly been to ensure Israel’s regional security. The Shi’a resistance axis in the Middle East, which is comprised of Iran, the Syrian regime and their Lebanon-based proxy Hezbollah, posed an existential threat to Israel; a fact which the Israel’s defense community realized for the first time during the 2006 Israel-Hezbollah war during the course of which Hezbollah fired hundreds of rockets into northern Israel.

Those were only unguided rockets but it was a wakeup call for Israel’s military strategists that what will happen if Iran passed the guided missile technology to Hezbollah whose area of operations lies very close to the northern borders of Israel?

Therefore, when the protests broke out against the Assad regime in Syria, in early 2011 in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings, under pressure from the Zionist lobbies, the Western powers took advantage of the opportunity and militarized those protests with the help of their regional allies: Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States. All of the aforementioned states belong to the Sunni denomination, which have been vying for influence in the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis.

Moreover, since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq, an informal pact existed between the Western powers, their regional allies and the Sunni Arab jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a resistance axis. In accordance with the pact, the Sunni militants were trained and armed in the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan.

This arrangement of an informal pact between the Western powers and the Sunni Arab jihadists of the Middle East against the Shi’a Iranian axis worked well up to August 2014, when Obama Administration made a volte-face on its previous regime change policy in Syria and started conducting air strikes against one group of Sunni militants battling against the Syrian regime, i.e. the Islamic State, after the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq and threatened the capital of another steadfast American ally: Masoud Barzani’s Erbil in the oil-rich Iraqi Kurdistan.

After the reversal of policy in Syria by the Western powers and the subsequent Russian military intervention on the side of the Syrian regime, the momentum of Sunni Arab jihadists’ expansion in Syria has stalled and they now feel that their Western patrons have committed a treachery against the Sunni jihadists’ cause; that’s why, they are infuriated and once again up in arms to exact revenge for this betrayal.

If we look at the chain of events, the timing of the Paris and Brussels attacks has been critical: the Islamic State overran Mosul in June 2014, the Obama Administration began conducting air strikes against the Islamic State’s targets in Iraq and Syria in August 2014, and after a lull of almost a decade since the Madrid and London bombings in 2004 and 2005, respectively, the first such incident of terrorism took place on the Western soil at the offices of the Charlie Hebdo in January 2015, and then the Islamic State carried out the November 2015 Paris attacks and the March 2016 Brussels bombings.

Notwithstanding, it is an irrefutable fact that the United States sponsors the militants, but only for a limited period of time in order to achieve certain policy objectives. For instance: the United States nurtured the Afghan jihadists during the Cold War against the erstwhile Soviet Union from 1979 to 1988, but after the signing of the Geneva Accords and the consequent withdrawal of the Soviet troops from Afghanistan, the United States withdrew its support from the Afghan jihadists.

Similarly, the United States lent its support to the militants during the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, but after achieving the policy objectives of toppling the Qaddafi regime in Libya and weakening the anti-Israel Assad regime in Syria, the United States relinquished its blanket support from the militants and eventually declared a war against a faction of Syrian militants, the Islamic State, when the latter transgressed its mandate in Syria and dared to occupy Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in early 2014.

The United States’ regional allies in the Middle East, however, are not as subtle and experienced in the Machiavellian geopolitics. Under the misconception that the alliances in international politics are permanent, the Middle Eastern autocrats keep pursuing the same untenable policy indefinitely, which was laid down by the hawks in Washington for a brief period of time in order to achieve certain strategic objectives.

For instance: the security establishment of Pakistan kept pursuing the policy of training and arming the Afghan and Kashmiri jihadists throughout the ’80 and ‘90s and right up to September 2001, even after the United States withdrew its support from the jihadists’ cause in Afghanistan in 1988 after the signing of the Geneva Accords.

Similarly, the Muslim Brotherhood-led government of Turkey has made the same mistake of lending indiscriminate support to the Syrian militants even after the United States’ partial reversal of policy in Syria and the declaration of war against the Islamic State in August 2014 in order to placate the international public opinion when the graphic images and videos of the Islamic State’s brutality surfaced on the internet.

Keeping up appearances in order to maintain the façade of justice and morality is indispensable in international politics and the Western powers strictly abide by this code of conduct. Their medieval client states in the Middle East, however, are not as experienced and they often keep pursuing the same unsustainable policies of training and arming the militants against their regional rivals, which are untenable in the long run in a world where pacifism is generally accepted as one of the fundamental axioms of the modern worldview.

Notwithstanding, the conflict in Syria and Iraq is actually a three-way conflict between the Sunni Arabs, the Shi’a Arabs and the Sunni Kurds. Although after the declaration of war against a faction of Sunni Arab militants, the Islamic State, the Obama Administration has also lent its support to the Shi’a-led government in Iraq, but the Shi’a Arabs of Iraq are not the trustworthy allies of the United States because they are under the influence of Iran.

Therefore, the Obama Administration was left with no other choice but to make the Kurds the centerpiece of its policy in Syria and Iraq after a group of Sunni Arab jihadists transgressed its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq from where the United States had withdrawn its troops only in December 2011. The so-called Syrian Democratic Forces are nothing more than Kurdish militias with a tinkering of mercenary Arab tribesmen in order to make them appear more representative and inclusive in outlook.

As far as the regional parties to the Syrian civil war are concerned, however, Saudi Arabia, Jordan and the Gulf Arab States might not have serious reservations against the close cooperation between the United States and the Kurds in Syria and Iraq, because the Gulf Arab States tend to look at the regional conflicts from the lens of the Iranian Shi’a threat. Turkey, on the other hand, has been wary of the separatist Kurdish tendencies in its southeast more than the Iranian Shi’a threat.

The sudden thaw in Turkey’s relations with Russia and latent hostility towards the West is partly due to the fact that Erdogan holds the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, responsible for the July coup plot and suspects that the latter has received tacit support from certain quarters in the United States’ intelligence community; but more importantly, Turkey also feels betrayed by the duplicitous Western policy in Syria and Iraq, and that’s why it is now seeking close cooperation with Russia in the region.

Syrian Civil War is the Reenactment of Soviet-Afghan Jihad

Zia-ul-Haq and Fazl-e-Haq.

George Santayana presciently said that those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. The only difference between the Afghan jihad back in the ‘80s, that spawned the Islamic jihadists like the Taliban and al Qaeda for the first time in history, and the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, 2011-onward, is that the Afghan jihad was an overt jihad: back then the Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, used to openly brag that the CIA provides all those AK-47s, RPGs and stingers to the Pakistani intelligence agencies, which then distributes those deadly weapons among the Afghan mujahideen (freedom fighters) to combat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

After the 9/11 tragedy, however, the Western political establishments and corporate media have become a lot more circumspect, therefore, this time around, they have waged covert jihads against the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Zionist Assad regime in Syria, in which the Islamic jihadists (aka terrorists) have been sold as “moderate rebels,” with secular and nationalist ambitions, to the Western audience.

Since the regime change objective in those hapless countries went against the mainstream narrative of ostensibly fighting a war against terror, therefore, the Western political establishments and the mainstream media are now trying to muddle the reality by offering color-coded schemes to identify myriads of militant and terrorist outfits that are operating in those countries: such as, the red militants of the Islamic State, which the Western powers want to eliminate; the yellow Islamic jihadists, like Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, with whom the Western powers can collaborate under desperate circumstances; and the green militants of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and a few other inconsequential outfits, which together comprise the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition.

It’s an incontrovertible fact that more than 90% of militants that are operating in Syria are either the Islamic jihadists or the armed tribesmen, and less than 10% are those who have defected from the Syrian army or otherwise have secular and nationalist goals.

As far as the infinitesimally small secular and liberal elite of the developing countries is concerned, such privileged classes can’t even cook breakfasts for themselves if their servants are on a holiday and the corporate media had us believing that the majority of the Syrian militants are “moderate rebels” who constitute the vanguard of the Syrian opposition against the Syrian regime in a brutal civil war and who believe in the principles of democracy, rule of law and liberal values as their cherished goals?

In political science the devil always lies in the definitions of the terms that we employ. For instance: how do you define a terrorist or a militant? In order to understand this, we need to identify the core of a “militant,” that what essential feature distinguishes him from the rest? A militant is basically an armed and violent individual who carries out subversive acts against the state.

That being understood, we now need to examine the concept of “violence.” Is it violence per se that is wrong, or does some kind of justifiable violence exists? I take the view, on empirical grounds, that all kinds of violence are essentially wrong; because the goals for which such violence is often employed are seldom right and elusive at best. Though democracy and liberal ideals are cherished goals but such goals can only be accomplished through peaceful means; expecting from the armed and violent thugs to bring about democratic reform is incredibly preposterous.

The Western mainstream media and its credulous neoliberal constituents, however, take a different view. According to them, there are two kinds of violence: justifiable and unjustifiable. When a militant resorts to violence for secular and nationalist goals, such as “bringing democracy” to Libya and Syria, the blindfolded liberal interventionists enthusiastically exhort such form of violence; however, if such militants later turn out to be Islamic jihadists, like the Misrata militia in Libya or the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front in Syria, the gullible neoliberals, who have been duped by the mainstream narrative, promptly make a volte-face and label them as “terrorists.”

Notwithstanding, on the subject of the supposed “powerlessness” of the US in the global affairs, the Western think tanks and the corporate media’s spin-doctors generally claim that Pakistan deceived the US in Afghanistan by providing clandestine support to the Taliban and the Haqqani network; Turkey hoodwinked the US in Syria by using the war against the Islamic State as a pretext for cracking down on Kurds; Saudi Arabia and UAE betrayed the US in Yemen by mounting airstrikes against the Houthis and Saleh’s loyalists; and once again Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt went against the “ostensible” policy of the US in Libya by conducting airstrikes against the Tripoli-based government, even though Khalifa Haftar, the military commander of the armed forces in eastern Libya, lived next door to the CIA’s headquarter in Langley, Virginia, for more than two decades.

If the US policymakers are so powerless and naïve then how come they still control the global economic order? This perennial whining attitude of the Western corporate media, that such and such regional actors betrayed them otherwise they were on the top of their game, is actually a clever stratagem that has been deliberately designed by the spin-doctors to cast the Western powers in a positive light and to demonize the adversaries, even if the latter are their tactical allies in some of the regional conflicts.

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 wrongdoing on the minor regional players.

Regardless, back in the ‘80s, the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” did not spring up spontaneously out of nowhere, some powers funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized those militants; how else could such ragtag militants had beaten back the super power of its time?

Then in 2011, in the wake of the Arab Spring uprisings in Libya, those same powers once again financed, trained, armed and internationally legitimized the Libyan militants by calling them pro-democracy, “armed” activists against the supposedly “brutal and tyrannical” rule of Gaddafi regime.

Similarly, in Syria, those very same powers once again had the audacity to fund, train, arm and internationally legitimize the Syrian militants; how else could such peaceful and democratic protests have mutated into a full-blown armed insurrection?

And even if those protests did mutate into an armed rebellion, left to their own resources, the best such civilian protestors could have mustered was to get a few pistols, shotguns and rifles; where did they get all those machine gun-mounted pick-up trucks, rocket-propelled grenades and the US-made TOW antitank missiles?

You don’t have to be a military strategist to understand a simple fact that unarmed civilian population, and even the ragtag militant outfits, lack the wherewithal to fight against the organized and professional armed forces of a country that are equipped with artillery, armored vehicles, air force and navy.

Leaving the funding, training and arming aspects of the insurgencies aside, but especially pertaining to conferring international legitimacy to an armed insurgency, like the Afghan so-called “freedom struggle” of the Cold War, or the supposedly “moderate and democratic” Libyan and Syrian insurgencies of today, it is simply beyond the power of minor regional players and their nascent media, which has a geographically and linguistically limited audience, to cast such heavily armed and brutal insurrections in a positive light in order to internationally legitimize them; only the Western mainstream media, that has a global audience and which serves as the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments, has perfected this game of legitimizing the absurd and selling the Satans as saviors.

Notwithstanding, for the whole of the last five years of the Syrian proxy war, the focal point of the Western policy has been that “Assad must go!” But what difference would it make to the lives of the ordinary Syrians even if the regime is replaced now when the civil war has claimed hundreds of thousands of lives, created millions of refugees, displaced half of the population and reduced the whole country of 22 million people to rubble? I do concede that Libya and Syria were not democratic states under Gaddafi and Assad, respectively; however, both of those countries were at least functioning states.

Gaddafi was ousted from power in September 2011; five years later, Tripoli is ruled by the Misrata militia, Benghazi is under the control of Khalifa Haftar, who is nothing more than the stooge of Egypt and UAE, and the heavily armed militants are having a field day all over Libya. It will now take decades, not years, to restore even a semblance of stability in Libya and Syria; remember that the proxy war in Afghanistan was originally fought in the ‘80s and today, 35 years later, Afghanistan is still in the midst of perpetual anarchy, lawlessness and an unrelenting Taliban insurgency.

If we were to draw parallels between the Soviet-Afghan jihad of the ‘80s and the Syrian civil war of today, the Western powers used the training camps located in the Af-Pak border regions to train and arm the Afghan mujahideen against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan with the help of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies.

Similarly, the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan are being used to provide training and arms to the Syrian militants in order to battle the Syrian regime with the support of Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies.

During the Afghan jihad, it is a known historical fact, that the bulk of the so-called “freedom fighters” was comprised of Pashtun Islamic jihadists, such as the factions of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf and scores of others, some of whom later coalesced together to form the Taliban movement.

Similarly, in Syria, the bulk of the so-called “moderate opposition” is comprised of Islamic jihadists, like the Islamic State, al-Nusra Front, Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham and myriads of other militant groups, including a small portion of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of the Free Syria Army (FSA.)

Moreover, apart from Pashtun Islamic jihadists, the various factions of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks constituted the relatively “moderate” segment of the Afghan rebellion, though those “moderate” warlords, like Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abul Rashid Dostum, were more ethnic and tribal in their character than secular or nationalist, as such.

Similarly, the Kurds of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces can be compared with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan. The socialist PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria, however, had been allied with the Shi’a regime against the Sunni Arab jihadists for the first three years of the Syrian civil war, i.e. from August 2011 to August 2014.

At the behest of the American stooge in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, the Syrian Kurds have switched sides in the last couple of years after the United States’ policy reversal and declaration of war against one faction of the Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, when the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in June 2014.

It’s very unfortunate that the haughty and myopic politicians and diplomats do not learn any lessons from history, otherwise all the telltale signs are there that Syria has become the Afghanistan of the Middle East and its repercussions on the stability of the energy-rich region and the security threat that the Syrian militants pose to the rest of the world will have far reaching consequences for many decades to come.

European Union as a Counterweight to Russian Influence

Is this not the international politics’ most significant coincidence that the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991 and the Maastricht Treaty that laid the foundations of the European Union was signed in February 1992? The basic purpose of the EU, it appears, has been nothing more than to induce the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe into the folds of the Western capitalist bloc by offering incentives and inducements, particularly in the form of the Schengen Agreement that has allowed the free movement of labor from the impoverished Eastern Europe to the prosperous countries of the Western Europe.

No wonder then, the Western political establishments, and particularly the US, are as freaked out about the outcome of Brexit as they had been during the Ukrainian Crisis in November 2013, when Viktor Yanukovych suspended the preparations for the implementation of an association agreement with the European Union and tried to take Ukraine back into the folds of the Russian sphere of influence by accepting a billions of dollars of loan offered by Vladimir Putin to Ukraine.

In this regard, the founding of EU has been similar to the case of Japan in the Far East. After the Second World War, when Japan was about to fall in the hands of the geographically-adjacent Soviet Union, the Truman Administration had authorized the use of nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to subjugate Japan and also to send a signal to the leaders of the Soviet Union, which at the time had not developed their nuclear program, to desist from encroaching upon Japan in the east and West Germany in the Europe.

Then, during the Cold War, the American entrepreneurs invested heavily in Japan’s economy and made it a model industrialized nation to forestall the expansion of communism in the Far East. The revolutionary Marxist manifesto of the communal ownership of the modes of production had such an appeal among the dispossessed masses of Asia, Africa and Latin America that the capitalist “trickle-down” economics was simply not a match for it.

Eventually, the pragmatic Machiavellian strategists of the Western capitalist bloc had to invent democracy as a ground for intervention in order to offset the moral superiority and mass appeal of the communist bloc.

Notwithstanding, there is an essential precondition in the European Union’s charter of union according to which the developing economies of Europe that joined the EU allowed the free movement of goods (free trade) only on the reciprocal condition that the developed countries would allow the free movement of labor.

What’s obvious in this stipulation is the fact that the free movement of goods, services and capital only benefits the countries that have a strong manufacturing base; and the free movement of workers only favors the developing economies where labor is cheap.

Now, when the international financial institutions, like the IMF and WTO, promote free trade by exhorting the developing countries all over the world to reduce tariffs and subsidies without the reciprocal free movement of labor, whose interests do such institutions try to protect? Obviously, they try to protect the interests of their biggest donors by shares, i.e. the developed countries.

Some market fundamentalists who irrationally believe in the laissez-faire capitalism try to justify this unfair practice by positing Schumpeter’s theory of “Creative destruction:” that the free trade between unequal trading partners leads to the destruction of the host country’s existing economic order and a subsequent reconfiguration gives birth to a better economic order.

Whenever one comes up with gross absurdities such proportions, they should always make it contingent upon the principle of reciprocity: that is, if free trade is beneficial for the nascent industrial base of the developing economies then the free movement of labor is equally beneficial for the workforce of the developed countries.

The policymakers of the developing countries must not allow themselves to be hoodwinked by such deceptive arguments, instead they should devise national policies which suit the interests of their underprivileged masses. But the trouble is that the governments of the Third World countries are dependent on foreign investment, that’s why they cannot adopt an independent economic and trade policy.

The so-called “multinational” corporations based in the Western financial districts make profits from the consumer markets all over the world and pay a share of those profits to their respective governments as bribes in the form of taxes. Every balance of trade deficit due to the lack of strong manufacturing base makes the developing nations poorer, and every balance of trade surplus further adds to the already immense fortune of the developed world.

A single large multinational corporation earns more revenue annually than the total GDP of many developing nations. Without this neocolonial system of exploitation the whole edifice of supposedly “meritocratic” capitalism will fall flat on its face and the myth of individual incentive would get busted beyond repair, because it only means incentive for the pike and not for the minnows.

Notwithstanding, while joining the EU, Britain compromised on the rights of its working class in order to protect the interests of its bankers and industrialists, because free trade with the rest of the EU countries spurred British exports.

I am of the opinion that the British working classes overwhelmingly voted in the favor of Brexit, because after Britain’s entry into the EU and when the Schengen Agreement on abolishing the internal border checks between the EU member states became effective in 1995, the cheaper labor force from the Eastern and Central Europe flooded the markets of Western Europe; and consequently the wages of indigenous British labor force dropped and it also became difficult for them to find jobs because the foreigners were willing to do the same job for lesser pay.

Hence raising the level of unemployment among the British workers and consequent discontentment with the EU. The subsequent lifting of restrictions on the Romanians and Bulgarians to work in the UK in January 2014 further exacerbated the problem.

The biggest incentive for the British working class to vote for Brexit is that the East European workers will have to leave Britain after its exit from the EU, and the jobs will once again become available with better wages to the indigenous workforce.

Although the champions of globalization and neoliberalism all over the world are bemoaning the fate of the EU after Brexit, but the recent success of right-wingers all over the world: like the rise of Trump in America, the Brexit referendum in the UK, the success of Modi and his hardline BJP in India, the emergence of Buddhist extremists in Sri Lanka and Myanmar and the ascendancy of Islamic hardliners in the Muslim-majority countries, all of these are not the success of conservatism, as such. Conservatism is an outdated political creed which is simply not a match for the more refined liberal worldview.

The aforementioned reactionary anomalies signify only one thing: the failure of neoliberalism as a political and economic ideology. Social liberalism of ‘60s and ‘70s used to be an inclusive and egalitarian philosophy while neoliberalism, ‘90s-onward, with its exclusive emphasis on economic growth and elitist values, and without any regard for social justice and class equality, is losing its appeal among the masses all over the world.

In fact, politics has become such a comic business after the onset of neoliberalism and the so-called “globalism” that actual comedians, like Jimmy Morales, have won a resounding victory in the Guatemalan elections last year; similarly, the Italian comedian, Beppe Grillo’s, “Five Star movement” has also secured more than 100 deputies in the last Italian elections; and the biggest tragicomic of them all, Donald Trump, too, has been elected as the president of the US.

Notwithstanding, although the EU's labor provisions ensure adequate wages and safeguard the rights of workers, but the British working class chose to quit the EU on the basis of demand and supply of labor. With East European workers out of the country, the supply of labor will reduce hence increasing the demand. The native British workforce can then renegotiate better terms and conditions from the owners of industries and businesses, and it will also ensure ready availability of jobs.

Regardless, instead of lamenting the abysmal failure of globalization and neoliberal economic policies, we need to ask a simple question that why do workers choose to leave their homes and hearths, and family and friends in their native countries and choose to work in a foreign country? They obviously do it for better wages.

In that case, however, instead of offering band aid solutions, we need to revise the prevailing global economic order; and formulate prudent and far-reaching economic and trade policies that can reduce the imbalance of wealth distribution between the prosperous and impoverished nations; hence, reducing the incentive for immigrant workers to seek employment in the developed countries.

Free movement of workers only benefits a small number of individuals and families, because the majority of workforce is left behind to rot in their native developing countries where economy is not doing as well as in the developed world, thanks to the neoliberal economic policies. A comprehensive reform of the global economic and trade policies, on the other hand, will benefit everyone, except the bankers, industrialists and the beneficiaries of the existing neoliberal world order.

More to the point, the promotion of free trade by the mainstream neoliberal media has been the norm in the last several decades, but the implementation of the Schengen Agreement in March 1995 that allowed the free movement of people between the EU member states has been an unprecedented exception.

Free trade benefits the industrialized nations of the EU, particularly Germany and to some extent the rest of the developed economies of the Western Europe; but the free movement of labor benefits the cheaper workforce of the impoverished Eastern and Central Europe.

The developed economies of the Western Europe would never have acceded to the condition of the free movement of labor that goes against their economic interests; but the political establishment of the US, which is the hub of corporate power and wields enormous influence in the Western capitalist bloc, must have persuaded the unwilling states of the Western Europe to yield to the condition in order to wean away the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe from the Russian influence.

Had there been any merit to the founding of the EU, the Western Europe would have promptly accepted Turkey’s request to join the EU. But they kept delaying the issue of Turkish membership in the EU for decades, because with a population of 78 million, Turkey is one of the most populous countries in Eurasia. Millions of Turks working in Germany have already become a burden on the welfare economy of their host country. Turkey’s accession to the EU will further open the floodgates of immigrant workers seeking employment in the Western Europe.

Moreover, Turkey is already a member of the NATO and a longstanding and reliable partner of the Western powers; while the limited offer to join the EU, as I have already mentioned, serves as an inducement to the formerly communist states of the Eastern and Central Europe to forswear their allegiance to Russia and to become the strategic allies of the Western powers.

Thus, all the grandstanding and moral posturing of unity and the equality of opportunity aside, the hopelessly neoliberal institution, the EU, in effect, is nothing more than the civilian counterpart of the Western military alliance against the erstwhile Soviet Union, the NATO, that employs a much more subtle and insidious tactic of economic warfare to win over political allies and to punish the adversaries that dare to sidestep from the global trade and economic policy as laid down by the Western capitalist bloc.

Motives behind the Assassination of Russian Ambassador to Turkey

In order to identify the likely motives of the 22 years old Turkish police officer who assassinated the Russian ambassador to Turkey, Andrey Karlov, we must keep in mind the backdrop that the Turkish and Iranian foreign ministers are en route to Russia to find a solution to the five years old Syrian conflict for the first time without the participation of the US.

Although the mainstream media is trumpeting that Mert Altintas, the assassin of the Russian ambassador, had shouted Islamist slogans in broken Arabic with a Turkish accent at the scene of the murder, therefore he must either be a member of the Islamic State or the Al Nusra Front; but from his clean-shaven face and black suit, he appeared more like an intelligence asset than an Islamic jihadist.

Bear in mind that the Erdogan Administration has repeatedly accused the US-based liberal Islamic preacher, Fethullah Gulen, for hatching a coup plot against the Turkish government in July who is known to have inside connections in the US Administration. Moreover, it is also a known fact that thousands of Gulenists have infiltrated the Turkish armed forces, judiciary and more importantly the police and intelligence agencies, which are in the process of being purged by the Erdogan Adminstration.

All of these facts and the motive that an important NATO member, Turkey, which has the second largest army in NATO, has been drifting away from the American-led alliance since the July coup plot and has developed close working relations with Russia, particularly in their respective Syria policy, points the finger only in one direction: that is, the likelihood of a double agent whose mission was to sabotage the relations between Russia and Turkey and to bring the latter back into the folds of NATO.

The sudden thaw in Turkey’s relations with Russia and latent hostility towards America is partly due to the fact that Erdogan holds the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, responsible for the July coup plot and suspects that the latter had received tacit support from certain quarters in the US; but more importantly Turkey also feels betrayed by the duplicitous American policy in Syria and Iraq, and that’s why it is now seeking closer cooperation with Russia in the region.

In order to elaborate America’s duplicity in Syria, let us settle on one issue first: there were two parties to the Syrian civil war initially, the Syrian regime and the Syrian opposition; which party did the US support since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq?

Obviously, the US supported the Syrian opposition. And what was the composition of that so-called “Syrian opposition?” A small fraction of it was comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Islamic jihadists who were generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by the Western powers, the Gulf States, Turkey and Jordan.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of the numerous Syrian jihadist outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other jihadist outfits have local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Syrian regime only, while the Islamic State overstepped its mandate in Syria when it captured Mosul and Anbar in Iraq.

All the Sunni jihadist groups that are operating in Syria are just as brutal as the Islamic State. The only thing that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded, and it also includes hundreds of Western citizens in its ranks who can later become a national security risk to the Western countries; a fact which has now become obvious after the Paris and Brussels bombings.

This fact explains the ambivalent policy of the US towards a monster that it had nurtured in Syria from August 2011 to June 2014, until the Islamic State captured Mosul in June 2014 and also threatened America’s most steadfast ally in the region – Masoud Barzani and his capital Erbil in the Iraqi Kurdistan, which is also the hub of Big Oil’s Northern Iraq operations. After that development, the US made a volte-face on its previous regime-change policy in Syria and now the declared objective became the war against the Islamic State.

Notwithstanding, the dilemma that Turkey is facing in Syria is quite unique: in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013 the stage was all set for yet another no-fly zone and “humanitarian intervention” a la Qaddafi’s Libya; the war hounds were waiting for a finishing blow and the then-Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the former Saudi intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, were shuttling between the Western capitals to lobby for the military intervention. Francois Hollande had already announced his intentions and David Cameron was also onboard.

Here it should be remembered that even during the Libyan intervention, Obama’s policy was a bit ambivalent and France under the leadership of Sarkozy had taken the lead role. In the Syrian case, however, the British parliament forced Cameron to seek a vote for military intervention in the House of Commons before committing the British troops and air force to Syria.

Taking cue from the British parliament, the US Congress also compelled Obama to seek approval before another ill-conceived military intervention; and since both the administrations lacked the requisite majority in their respective parliaments and the public opinion was also fiercely against another Middle Eastern war, therefore, Obama and Cameron dropped their plans of enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.

In the end, France was left alone as the only Western power still in the favor of intervention; at this point, however, the seasoned Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, staged a diplomatic coup by announcing that the Syrian regime is willing to ship its chemical weapons’ stockpiles out of Syria and subsequently the issue was amicably resolved.

Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states: the main beneficiaries of the Sunni Jihad in Syria, however, had lost a golden opportunity to deal a fatal blow to the Shi’a alliance comprising Iran, Syria and their Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah.

To add insult to the injury, the Islamic State, one of the numerous Sunni jihadist outfits fighting in Syria, overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul in northern Iraq in June 2014 and threatened the capital of America’s most steadfast ally in the region, Masoud Barzani’s Erbil, as I have already mentioned.

The US had no choice but to adopt some countermeasures to show that it is still sincere in pursuing its schizophrenic “war on terror” policy; at the same time, however, it assured its Turkish, Jordanian and Gulf Arab allies that despite fighting a war against the maverick jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, the Western policy of training and arming the so-called “moderate Syrian militants” will continue apace and that Bashar al-Assad’s days are numbered, one way or the other.

Moreover, declaring the war against the Islamic State in August 2014 served another purpose too: in order to commit the US Air Force to Syria and Iraq, the Obama Administration needed the approval of the US Congress which was not available, as I have already mentioned, but by declaring a war against the Islamic State, which is a designated terrorist organization, the Obama Administration availed itself of the “war on terror” provisions in the US’ laws and thus circumvented the US Congress.

But then Russia threw a spanner in the schemes of NATO and its Gulf Arab allies in September 2015 by its surreptitious military buildup in Latakia that was executed with an element of surprise unheard of since Rommel, the Desert Fox. And now Turkey, Jordan, the Gulf Arab states and their Sunni jihadist proxies in Syria find themselves at the receiving end in the Syrian civil war.

Therefore, although the Sunni states of the Middle East still toe the American line in the region publicly, but behind the scenes there is bitter resentment that the US has let them down by making an about-face on the previous regime change policy in Syria and the subsequent declaration of war against one group of Sunni militants in Syria, i.e. the Islamic State.

This change of policy by the US directly benefits the Iranian-led axis in the region. In the war against the Islamic State in Mosul, Turkey has also contributed troops but more than waging a war against the Islamic State the purpose of those troops is to ensure the safety of the Sunni population of Mosul against the onslaught of the Iraqi armed forces and especially the irregular Shi’a militias, which are known for committing excesses against the Sunnis in Iraq.

How Moderate Rebels are Supported by Islamic State in Syria?

During the last couple of months, two very similar military campaigns have simultaneously been going on in Syria and Iraq, while the Syrian offensive with Russian air support against the militants in east Aleppo has been reviled as an assault against humanity, the military campaign in Mosul by the Iraqi armed forces and Shi’a militias with American air support has been lauded as the struggle for “liberation” by the mainstream media.

Although the campaign in Mosul is against the Islamic State while in east Aleppo the Syrian regime has launched a military offensive against the so-called “moderate rebels,” but the distinction between Islamic jihadists and “moderate” militants is more illusory than real.

Before it turned rogue and overran Mosul in Iraq, the Islamic State used to be an integral part of the Syrian opposition against the regime and it still enjoys close ideological and operational ties with other militant groups in Syria. Keep in mind that although turf wars are common not just between the Islamic State and other militant outfits in Syria, but also among the rebel groups themselves; however, the ultimate objective of the Islamic State and the rest of militant outfits in Syria is the same: that is, to overthrow the Shi’a majority regime of Bashar al-Assad.

It is not a coincidence then that when the regime was on the verge of winning a resounding victory against the militants holed up in east Aleppo, the Islamic State came to the rescue of its brothers-in-arms by opening up a new front in Palmyra from where it had been evicted in March. Consequently, the regime has to send reinforcements from Aleppo to Palmyra in order to defend the city and thus the momentum of the military offensive in east Aleppo has stalled.

It defies explanation that while the US has announced the Phase II of the military campaign against the Islamic State in Syria and the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) have amassed north of the Islamic State’s bastion in al-Raqqah, instead of buttressing its defenses against the SDF in the north, the Islamic State has launched an offensive against the Syrian regime in the south? In order to answer this perplexing question, we need to revisit the ideology, composition and objectives of the Islamic State in Syria.

Unlike al Qaeda, which is a terrorist organization that generally employs anticolonial and anti-West rhetoric to draw funds and followers, the Islamic State and the majority of militant groups in Syria are basically anti-Shi’a sectarian outfits. By the designation “terrorism” it is generally implied and understood that an organization which has the intentions and capability of carrying out acts of terrorism on the Western soil.

Though the Islamic State has carried out a few acts of terrorism against the Western countries, such as the high profile Paris and Brussels attacks, but if we look at the pattern of its subversive activities, especially in the Middle East, it generally targets the Shi’a Muslims in Syria and Iraq. A few acts of terrorism that it has carried out in the Gulf Arab states were also directed against the Shi’a Muslims in the Eastern province of Saudi Arabia and Shi’a mosques in Yemen and Kuwait.

Many biased political commentators of the mainstream media deliberately try to muddle the reality in order to link the emergence of the Islamic State to the ill-conceived invasion of Iraq in 2003 by the Bush Administration. Their motive behind this chicanery is to absolve the Obama Administration’s policy of supporting the Syrian opposition against the Syrian regime since the beginning of the Syrian civil war until June 2014 when Islamic State overran Mosul and Obama Administration made an about-face on its previous policy of indiscriminate support to the Syrian opposition and declared a war against a faction of Syrian opposition: that is, the Islamic State.

Moreover, such spin-doctors also try to find the roots of Islamic State in al-Qaeda in Iraq; however, the insurgency in Iraq died down after “the Iraq surge” of 2007. Al-Qaeda in Iraq became an impotent organization after the death of Abu Musab al Zarqawi and the subsequent surge of troops in Iraq. The re-eruption of insurgency in Iraq has been the spillover effect of nurturing militants in Syria against the Assad regime, when the Islamic State overran Fallujah and parts of Ramadi in January 2014 and subsequently captured Mosul in June 2014.

The borders between Syria and Iraq are quite porous and it’s impossible to contain the flow of militants and arms between the two countries. The Obama Administration’s policy of providing money, arms and training to the Syrian militants in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey and Jordan was bound to backfire sooner or later.

Notwithstanding, in order to simplify the Syrian theater of proxy wars for the sake of readers, I would divide it into three separate and distinct zones of influence. Firstly, the northern and northwestern zone along the Syria-Turkey border, in and around Aleppo and Idlib, which is under the influence of Turkey and Qatar.

Both of these countries share the ideology of Muslim Brotherhood and they provide money, training and arms to the Sunni Arab jihadist organizations like al-Tawhid Brigade, Nour al-Din Zenki Brigade and Ahrar al-Sham in the training camps located at the border regions of Turkey.

Secondly, the southern zone of influence along the Syria-Jordan border, in Daraa and Quneitra and as far away as Homs and Damascus. It is controlled by the Saudi-Jordanian camp and they provide money, weapons and training to the Salafist militant groups such as al-Nusra Front and the Southern Front of the so-called “moderate” Free Syria Army in Daraa and Quneitra, and Jaysh al-Islam in the suburbs of Damascus.

Their military strategy is directed by a Military Operations Center (MOC) and training camps located in the border regions of Jordan. Here let me clarify that this distinction is quite overlapping and heuristic at best, because al-Nusra’s jihadists have taken part in battles as far away as Idlib and Aleppo.

And finally, the eastern zone of influence along the Syria-Iraq border, in al-Raqqah and Deir al-Zor, which has been controlled by a relatively maverick Iraq-based jihadist outfit, the Islamic State. Thus, leaving the Mediterranean coast and Syria’s border with Lebanon, the Baathist and Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime has been surrounded from all three sides by the hostile Sunni forces: Turkey and Muslim Brotherhood in the north, Jordan and the Salafists of the Gulf Arab States in the south and the Sunni Arab-majority regions of Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in the east.

The bottom line is that although the American efforts to stall the momentum of the Islamic jihadists’ expansion in Iraq appears to be sincere, but the Western powers and their regional allies are still pursuing the duplicitous policy of using the Syrian militants, including the Islamic State, to destabilize the Assad regime in Syria.

Why Turkey is seeking cooperation with Russia in Syria?

The sudden thaw in Turkey’s relations with Russia and latent hostility towards America is partly due to the fact that Erdogan holds the US-based preacher, Fethullah Gulen, responsible for the July coup plot and suspects that the latter had received tacit support from certain quarters in the US; but more importantly Turkey also feels betrayed by the duplicitous American policy in Syria and Iraq, and that’s why it is now seeking closer cooperation with Russia in the region.

In order to elaborate American duplicity in Syria, let us settle on one issue first: there were two parties to the Syrian civil war initially, the Syrian regime and the Syrian opposition; which party did the US support since the beginning of the Syrian civil war in August 2011 to June 2014, when the Islamic State overran Mosul in Iraq?

Obviously, the US supported the Syrian opposition. And what was the composition of that so-called “Syrian opposition?” A small fraction of it was comprised of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army, but the vast majority has been comprised of Islamic jihadists who were generously funded, trained, armed and internationally legitimized by the Western powers, the Gulf States, Turkey and Jordan.

The Islamic State is nothing more than one of the numerous Syrian jihadist outfits, others being: al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Tawhid brigade, Jaysh al Islam etc. The reason why the US has turned against the Islamic State is that all other jihadist outfits have local ambitions that are limited to fighting the Syrian regime only, while the Islamic State overstepped its mandate in Syria when it captured Mosul and Anbar in Iraq.

All the Sunni jihadist groups that are operating in Syria are just as brutal as the Islamic State. The only thing that differentiates the Islamic State from the rest is that it is more ideological and independent-minded, and it also includes hundreds of Western citizens in its ranks who can later become a national security risk to the Western countries; a fact which has now become obvious after the Paris and Brussels bombings.

This fact explains the ambivalent policy of the US towards a monster that it had nurtured in Syria from August 2011 to June 2014, until the Islamic State captured Mosul in June 2014 and also threatened America’s most steadfast ally in the region – Masoud Barzani and his capital Erbil in the Iraqi Kurdistan, which is also the hub of Big Oil’s Northern Iraq operations. After that development, the US made a volte-face on its previous regime-change policy in Syria and now the declared objective became the war against the Islamic State.

Notwithstanding, the dilemma that Turkey is facing in Syria is quite unique: in the wake of the Ghouta chemical weapons attacks in Damascus in August 2013 the stage was all set for yet another no-fly zone and “humanitarian intervention” a la Qaddafi’s Libya; the war hounds were waiting for a finishing blow and the then-Turkish foreign minister, Ahmet Davutoglu, and the former Saudi intelligence chief, Bandar bin Sultan, were shuttling between the Western capitals to lobby for the military intervention. Francois Hollande had already announced his intentions and David Cameron was also onboard.

Here it should be remembered that even during the Libyan intervention, Obama’s policy was a bit ambivalent and France under the leadership of Sarkozy had taken the lead role. In the Syrian case, however, the British parliament forced Cameron to seek a vote for military intervention in the House of Commons before committing the British troops and air force to Syria.

Taking cue from the British parliament, the US Congress also compelled Obama to seek approval before another ill-conceived military intervention; and since both the administrations lacked the requisite majority in their respective parliaments and the public opinion was also fiercely against another Middle Eastern war, therefore, Obama and Cameron dropped their plans of enforcing a no-fly zone over Syria.

In the end, France was left alone as the only Western power still in the favor of intervention; at this point, however, the seasoned Russian foreign minister, Sergei Lavrov, staged a diplomatic coup by announcing that the Syrian regime is willing to ship its chemical weapons’ stockpiles out of Syria and subsequently the issue was amicably resolved.

Turkey, Jordan and the Gulf Arab states – the main beneficiaries of the Sunni Jihad in Syria, however, lost a golden opportunity to deal a fatal blow to the Shi’a alliance comprising Iran, Syria and their Lebanon-based proxy, Hezbollah.

To add insult to the injury, the Islamic State, one of the numerous Sunni jihadist outfits fighting in Syria, overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul in northern Iraq in June 2014 and threatened the capital of America’s most steadfast ally in the region – Masoud Barzani’s Erbil, as I have already mentioned.

The US had no choice but to adopt some countermeasures to show that it is still sincere in pursuing its schizophrenic “war on terror” policy; at the same time, however, it assured its Turkish, Jordanian and Gulf Arab allies that despite fighting a war against the maverick jihadist outfit, the Islamic State, the Western policy of training and arming the so-called “moderate Syrian militants” will continue apace and that Bashar al-Assad’s days are numbered, one way or the other.

Moreover, declaring the war against the Islamic State in August 2014 served another purpose too – in order to commit the US Air Force to Syria and Iraq, the Obama Administration needed the approval of the US Congress which was not available, as I have already mentioned, but by declaring a war against the Islamic State, which is a designated terrorist organization, the Obama Administration availed itself of the “war on terror” provisions in the US’ laws and thus circumvented the US Congress.

But then Russia threw a spanner in the schemes of NATO and its Gulf Arab allies in September 2015 by its surreptitious military buildup in Latakia that was executed with an element of surprise unheard of since Rommel, the Desert Fox. And now Turkey, Jordan, the Gulf Arab states and their Sunni jihadist proxies in Syria find themselves at the receiving end in the Syrian civil war.

Therefore, although the Sunni states of the Middle East still toe the American line in the region publicly, but behind the scenes there is bitter resentment that the US has let them down by making an about-face on the previous regime change policy in Syria and the subsequent declaration of war against one group of Sunni militants in Syria, i.e. the Islamic State.

This change of policy by the US directly benefits the Iranian-led axis in the region. In the war against the Islamic State in Mosul, Turkey has also contributed troops but more than waging a war against the Islamic State the purpose of those troops is to ensure the safety of the Sunni population of Mosul against the onslaught of the Iraqi armed forces and especially the irregular Shi’a militias, which are known for committing excesses against the Sunnis in Iraq.

Notwithstanding, in order to create a semblance of objectivity and fairness, the American policymakers and analysts are always willing to accept the blame for the mistakes of the distant past that have no bearing on the present, however, any fact that impinges on their present policy is conveniently brushed aside.

In the case of the creation of the 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 so-called “freedom fighters” 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 creation of the 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 has been the doing of the present policy of the 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 the Islamic State, al Nusra Front, Ahrar al-Sham and numerous other Sunni jihadist groups in Syria and Iraq has been the Obama Administration’s policy of intervention through proxies in Syria.