Why a U.S. Alliance With al-Qaida Is a Crazy Idea
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_a_us_alliance_with_al-qaida_is_a_cra
zy_idea_20150630/
Posted on Jun 30, 2015
By Stanley Heller
TonelloPhotography / Shutterstock
The United States' Middle East strategy is in trouble and its policymakers
know it. There was an important article in the New York Times this month by
Anne Barnard and Tim Arango. It admits that the U.S.' Iraq/Syria attacks
aren't going well and Islamic State is making "political gains." It notes
that Islamic State took Ramadi and Palmyra "even after nearly 4,000
airstrikes by the American-led coalition and what United States officials
say are the deaths of 10,000 ISIS militants." The Times authors say
"Washington is tinkering with tactics and weapons."
Mostly the writers talk about unnamed "experts" and "analysts." One of these
says that by attacking Islamic State in Syria while doing nothing to stop
Syrian President Bashar Assad from bombing Sunni areas that have rebelled,
the U.S.-led campaign was driving some Syrians into the militant group's
camp. The U.S. has talked for months about training a force of Syrians, but,
the Times writes, "the program is small, with only 90 fighters in the first
round of training." Ninety fighters!
The implication is that the "experts" want the air war to expand, to have
the U.S. bomb Assad forces too. This is an embrace of the Saudi strategy
that sees Assad/Iran as the main enemy and the slew of Sunni jihadi armies
as either allies or a problem to be dealt with later.
It gets worse. Now the "experts" are toying with an alliance with al-Qaida.
We're supposed to put the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center behind us
and be ultra-crafty and use one group of fanatics against the other.
Ahmed Rashid, who wrote the influential book "Taliban," says "al-Qaida has
evolved in profound ways." He talks about their groups in Syria (al-Nusra)
and Yemen (AQAP) and says the two "have become allies and not enemies of the
Arab states, despite the fact that [al-Qaida] itself once sought to
overthrow these same regimes." He writes "in interviews with [Al-Jazeera]
al-Nusra leaders have vowed not to attack targets in the West, promoting an
ideology that might be called 'nationalist jihadism' rather than global
jihad." Wonderful-an al-Qaida vow. You can surely take that to the bank.
Rashid sees the Americans' strategy as having failed. According to him, they
should have backed the Syrian "moderates" full stop from the start. In his
view the U.S. doesn't understand what the "Arab states" know, that the
"solution will never come from the weak moderate opposition, and that any
lasting peace will require support by the strong and ruthless Islamist
groups fighting there."
In case you think Rashid is just one guy off his nut, consider a piece by
Wall Street Journal (WSJ) foreign policy analyst Yaroslav Trofimov. He talks
about "the view of some of America's regional allies and even some Western
officials." As they see it, "reaching out to the more pragmatic Nusra is the
only rational choice left for the international community." (Remember:
"pragmatic" Nusra is the official al-Qaida franchise in Syria.) Who are
these allies? Trofimov quotes Saudi Prince Faisal bin Saud bin Abdulmohsen,
a "scholar" at a research center in Riyadh. His voiced wisdom is to
"differentiate between fanaticism and outright monstrosity," al-Qaida
apparently being only fanatics. Trofimov quotes another scholar, this one
American, who explains, "The Turks, the Saudis and the Qataris have decided
that the problem above all is to get rid of Bashar al-Assad." Those are the
words of Robert Ford, Obama's former U.S. ambassador to Syria. Ford doesn't
actually say he supports that policy (though he comes closer to that in an
article for an institute for which he now works). The former diplomat merely
explains the policy of our dear allies, leaving the reader to decipher the
tea leaves.
One former U.S. official comes right out in support of this lunacy. Trofimov
reports, "Washington is likely to go 'pretty far' in tolerating the budding
collaboration between its regional allies and Nusra, said U.S. Navy Adm.
James Stavridis, who retired two years ago as NATO's supreme allied
commander." Stavridis says that's OK: ". if our allies are working with
them, that is acceptable."
Another of our allies has been in a quiet relationship with al-Nusra for
some time. Israel takes in wounded al-Nusra fighters, patches them up and
sends them back to Syria. The WSJ's Trofimov reported on this in March. The
Jerusalem Post, commenting on that WSJ article, stated, "Israel has provided
medical assistance to nearly 2,000 Syrians" and said "most of those treated
were armed rebels fighting the regime." On June 20 the same Israeli
newspaper featured an interview with retired deputy CIA director Michael
Morrell, who warned about Israel's "tacit understandings with the Nusra
Front."
U.S. policymakers have repeatedly used the jihadi option. This after all was
the brilliant strategy of the 1980s, to arm the mujahedeen of Afghanistan,
"giving to the USSR its Vietnam war," in the immortal words of Jimmy
Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. The most that could
go wrong, Brzezinski said, was that we'd create some "stirred-up Moslems."
Methinks he somewhat underestimated the actual blowback.
Now let's be hard-boiled like proper government officials and not
sentimental about the 3,000 dead on 9/11. Is al-Nusra "evolved" and
"pragmatic," and can we enlist it to become another in a long line of "our
bastards"? The problem is that neither in its beliefs or actions can you see
much evidence of an al-Qaida 2.0. A Nusra-led coalition took the Syrian
province of Idlib in March. On June 11 it executed over 20 Syrian members of
the Druze religion. (This got Israeli Druze so upset that on June 22, they
surrounded an Israeli ambulance carrying suspected injured Nusra fighters
and killed one of them.) The al-Nusra version of religion is apparently as
bigoted and vicious as ever. Nor have the group read up on the Geneva
Convention. As late as January 2014 it was beheading prisoners.
Is al-Nusra at least willing to keep the head-chopping limited to the Middle
East? Sadly, the answer is no, and for an authority I'll give you none other
than the aforementioned Ahmed Rashid, who wrote about al-Qaida in January in
the wake of the al-Qaida-inspired Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. His piece
talked about how the Yemeni branch showed its dedication to the longtime
al-Qaida strategy of fighting the "far enemy" as opposed to Islamic State
going after the "near enemy." Rashid concluded "ISIS represents an
extraordinary threat of its own, but the Paris attacks have demonstrated
that the greatest danger to the West is still al-Qaida."
Well, at least they're mortal enemies of Islamic State, right?
Unfortunately, that's not true either. Yarmouk on the outskirts of Damascus
was once home to 800,000 Palestinians and Syrians. Assad had it under siege
for over a year. By the start of this year, 95 percent of the population had
fled and Nusra had sway over a large section of the ruins. Then at the start
of this year Islamic State entered Yarmouk, let in by none other than its
supposed enemy Nusra!
In case I've been too subtle, let me say it more clearly: An alliance with
Nusra/al-Qaida is crazy, immoral and a recipe for disaster.
Below is a counterstrategy. It's based on a few principles: 1) With their
immense crimes in Iraq and elsewhere, U.S. forces should be the last to be
asked to intervene anywhere. 2) Iran, Russia and Hezbollah have committed
grave crimes by supporting Assad's fascist regime, and 3) the left should
not support any military force intervening in Iraq/Syria and should
concentrate instead on stopping foreign intervention.
As for what the left should advocate, here are some elements of a strategy:
1. The U.S. government should stop its warfare in the Middle East and help
the situation by demanding that its Gulf allies and Turkey stop funding or
arming al-Nusra and that they vigorously prosecute their citizens who go to
Syria/Iraq to fight or to fund jihadi armies. To make its point, the U.S.
should stop selling weapons to the Saudi regime, Turkey and the Gulf
hereditary dictatorships.
2. The U.S. should take onto our shores hundreds of thousands of refugees.
3. The U.S. should lean on Israel to repatriate Palestinians in Syria back
to their homes.
4. The left should insist that Russia and Iran and Hezbollah stop arming
Assad forces. In all media it should puncture any illusion that the Assad
regime is "anti-imperialist" or that that supposed quality even matters in
view of the horrors it has committed against Syrians. This is not in any way
support for a new U.S. cold war. The U.S. government should simply butt out.
5. Call for an end of all sieges. Grant all civilians free access to water
and humanitarian aid, and encourage cease-fires.
Over the long term, this will give left and democratic forces in the Middle
East the moral, political and material support to prevail.
http://www.truthdig.com/ http://www.truthdig.com/
Why a U.S. Alliance With al-Qaida Is a Crazy Idea
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/why_a_us_alliance_with_al-qaida_is_a_cra
zy_idea_20150630/
Posted on Jun 30, 2015
By Stanley Heller
TonelloPhotography / Shutterstock
The United States' Middle East strategy is in trouble and its policymakers
know it. There was an important article in the New York Times this month by
Anne Barnard and Tim Arango. It admits that the U.S.' Iraq/Syria attacks
aren't going well and Islamic State is making "political gains." It notes
that Islamic State took Ramadi and Palmyra "even after nearly 4,000
airstrikes by the American-led coalition and what United States officials
say are the deaths of 10,000 ISIS militants." The Times authors say
"Washington is tinkering with tactics and weapons."
Mostly the writers talk about unnamed "experts" and "analysts." One of these
says that by attacking Islamic State in Syria while doing nothing to stop
Syrian President Bashar Assad from bombing Sunni areas that have rebelled,
the U.S.-led campaign was driving some Syrians into the militant group's
camp. The U.S. has talked for months about training a force of Syrians, but,
the Times writes, "the program is small, with only 90 fighters in the first
round of training." Ninety fighters!
The implication is that the "experts" want the air war to expand, to have
the U.S. bomb Assad forces too. This is an embrace of the Saudi strategy
that sees Assad/Iran as the main enemy and the slew of Sunni jihadi armies
as either allies or a problem to be dealt with later.
It gets worse. Now the "experts" are toying with an alliance with al-Qaida.
We're supposed to put the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center behind us
and be ultra-crafty and use one group of fanatics against the other.
Ahmed Rashid, who wrote the influential book "Taliban," says "al-Qaida has
evolved in profound ways." He talks about their groups in Syria (al-Nusra)
and Yemen (AQAP) and says the two "have become allies and not enemies of the
Arab states, despite the fact that [al-Qaida] itself once sought to
overthrow these same regimes." He writes "in interviews with [Al-Jazeera]
al-Nusra leaders have vowed not to attack targets in the West, promoting an
ideology that might be called 'nationalist jihadism' rather than global
jihad." Wonderful-an al-Qaida vow. You can surely take that to the bank.
Rashid sees the Americans' strategy as having failed. According to him, they
should have backed the Syrian "moderates" full stop from the start. In his
view the U.S. doesn't understand what the "Arab states" know, that the
"solution will never come from the weak moderate opposition, and that any
lasting peace will require support by the strong and ruthless Islamist
groups fighting there."
In case you think Rashid is just one guy off his nut, consider a piece by
Wall Street Journal (WSJ) foreign policy analyst Yaroslav Trofimov. He talks
about "the view of some of America's regional allies and even some Western
officials." As they see it, "reaching out to the more pragmatic Nusra is the
only rational choice left for the international community." (Remember:
"pragmatic" Nusra is the official al-Qaida franchise in Syria.) Who are
these allies? Trofimov quotes Saudi Prince Faisal bin Saud bin Abdulmohsen,
a "scholar" at a research center in Riyadh. His voiced wisdom is to
"differentiate between fanaticism and outright monstrosity," al-Qaida
apparently being only fanatics. Trofimov quotes another scholar, this one
American, who explains, "The Turks, the Saudis and the Qataris have decided
that the problem above all is to get rid of Bashar al-Assad." Those are the
words of Robert Ford, Obama's former U.S. ambassador to Syria. Ford doesn't
actually say he supports that policy (though he comes closer to that in an
article for an institute for which he now works). The former diplomat merely
explains the policy of our dear allies, leaving the reader to decipher the
tea leaves.
One former U.S. official comes right out in support of this lunacy. Trofimov
reports, "Washington is likely to go 'pretty far' in tolerating the budding
collaboration between its regional allies and Nusra, said U.S. Navy Adm.
James Stavridis, who retired two years ago as NATO's supreme allied
commander." Stavridis says that's OK: ". if our allies are working with
them, that is acceptable."
Another of our allies has been in a quiet relationship with al-Nusra for
some time. Israel takes in wounded al-Nusra fighters, patches them up and
sends them back to Syria. The WSJ's Trofimov reported on this in March. The
Jerusalem Post, commenting on that WSJ article, stated, "Israel has provided
medical assistance to nearly 2,000 Syrians" and said "most of those treated
were armed rebels fighting the regime." On June 20 the same Israeli
newspaper featured an interview with retired deputy CIA director Michael
Morrell, who warned about Israel's "tacit understandings with the Nusra
Front."
U.S. policymakers have repeatedly used the jihadi option. This after all was
the brilliant strategy of the 1980s, to arm the mujahedeen of Afghanistan,
"giving to the USSR its Vietnam war," in the immortal words of Jimmy
Carter's National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski. The most that could
go wrong, Brzezinski said, was that we'd create some "stirred-up Moslems."
Methinks he somewhat underestimated the actual blowback.
Now let's be hard-boiled like proper government officials and not
sentimental about the 3,000 dead on 9/11. Is al-Nusra "evolved" and
"pragmatic," and can we enlist it to become another in a long line of "our
bastards"? The problem is that neither in its beliefs or actions can you see
much evidence of an al-Qaida 2.0. A Nusra-led coalition took the Syrian
province of Idlib in March. On June 11 it executed over 20 Syrian members of
the Druze religion. (This got Israeli Druze so upset that on June 22, they
surrounded an Israeli ambulance carrying suspected injured Nusra fighters
and killed one of them.) The al-Nusra version of religion is apparently as
bigoted and vicious as ever. Nor have the group read up on the Geneva
Convention. As late as January 2014 it was beheading prisoners.
Is al-Nusra at least willing to keep the head-chopping limited to the Middle
East? Sadly, the answer is no, and for an authority I'll give you none other
than the aforementioned Ahmed Rashid, who wrote about al-Qaida in January in
the wake of the al-Qaida-inspired Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris. His piece
talked about how the Yemeni branch showed its dedication to the longtime
al-Qaida strategy of fighting the "far enemy" as opposed to Islamic State
going after the "near enemy." Rashid concluded "ISIS represents an
extraordinary threat of its own, but the Paris attacks have demonstrated
that the greatest danger to the West is still al-Qaida."
Well, at least they're mortal enemies of Islamic State, right?
Unfortunately, that's not true either. Yarmouk on the outskirts of Damascus
was once home to 800,000 Palestinians and Syrians. Assad had it under siege
for over a year. By the start of this year, 95 percent of the population had
fled and Nusra had sway over a large section of the ruins. Then at the start
of this year Islamic State entered Yarmouk, let in by none other than its
supposed enemy Nusra!
In case I've been too subtle, let me say it more clearly: An alliance with
Nusra/al-Qaida is crazy, immoral and a recipe for disaster.
Below is a counterstrategy. It's based on a few principles: 1) With their
immense crimes in Iraq and elsewhere, U.S. forces should be the last to be
asked to intervene anywhere. 2) Iran, Russia and Hezbollah have committed
grave crimes by supporting Assad's fascist regime, and 3) the left should
not support any military force intervening in Iraq/Syria and should
concentrate instead on stopping foreign intervention.
As for what the left should advocate, here are some elements of a strategy:
1. The U.S. government should stop its warfare in the Middle East and help
the situation by demanding that its Gulf allies and Turkey stop funding or
arming al-Nusra and that they vigorously prosecute their citizens who go to
Syria/Iraq to fight or to fund jihadi armies. To make its point, the U.S.
should stop selling weapons to the Saudi regime, Turkey and the Gulf
hereditary dictatorships.
2. The U.S. should take onto our shores hundreds of thousands of refugees.
3. The U.S. should lean on Israel to repatriate Palestinians in Syria back
to their homes.
4. The left should insist that Russia and Iran and Hezbollah stop arming
Assad forces. In all media it should puncture any illusion that the Assad
regime is "anti-imperialist" or that that supposed quality even matters in
view of the horrors it has committed against Syrians. This is not in any way
support for a new U.S. cold war. The U.S. government should simply butt out.
5. Call for an end of all sieges. Grant all civilians free access to water
and humanitarian aid, and encourage cease-fires.
Over the long term, this will give left and democratic forces in the Middle
East the moral, political and material support to prevail.
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