The
Attack in Nice
By Steven
Chovanec
July
16, 2016 "Information
Clearing House"
- Perhaps one of the most striking features of
the attack in Nice are not what occurred in
France, but instead how the reaction exemplifies
the selective humanity that we exhibit depending
on where terrorism occurs.
The
public, politicians, and the media all
rightfully displayed outrage over the string of
attacks that have been plaguing France over the
past 18 months, as well as the recent Orlando
shooting in the US, yet the level of outrage and
media coverage never reaches the same levels
when terrorism strikes other parts of the world,
in particular the Middle East.
This in
turn breeds a skewed perception in the West that
it is a “battle of civilizations” that is being
fought. It obscures by omission the fact that
most of the terrorism committed by groups like
al-Qaeda and ISIS is perpetuated against other
Arabs in Muslim-majority countries. This flawed
perception then leads to the painting of all
Muslim’s as terrorists, fueling the ignorant
racism of calls by the likes of Donald Trump to
discriminate against them, completely neglecting
the fact that it is Muslims and Arabs that are
on the forefront of this battle sacrificing
their lives to rid the world of the jihadis. It
paints a picture in Western minds that the cause
of all of this is an ethereal religious
ideology, or that this is a problem inherent in
Arab and Muslim “blood,
in their DNA”, when in reality the extremism
is mainly an outgrowth of the practical
imperialism that is arming, training, and
financially supporting the terror groups for
purposes of geopolitical expansion, the main
driver of which being the United States.
For
example, not many spoke out when just last week
nearly
300 were killed in Baghdad following the
detonation of a truck bomb for which ISIS
claimed responsibility. It was the deadliest
attack in the Iraqi capital in years, yet
exactly what were the circumstances that led
ISIS to thrive there?
When ISIS
declared its existence in Syria in 2014, it had
long been known that the group would push back
into its old pockets of support in the cities of
Mosul and Ramadi.
2 years
prior in 2012, a vetted
Intelligence Information Report of the DIA
was circulated throughout the Obama
administration. It predicted the rise of ISIS
given the support from “the West, Gulf
countries, and Turkey” to a Syrian opposition
dominated by “the Salafists, the Muslim
Brotherhood, and AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq).” It
predicted that the continued empowerment of
these forces would cause deterioration, which
would have “dire consequences on the Iraqi
situation”, thus precipitating “the ideal
atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets
in Mosul and Ramadi, and will provide a renewed
momentum under the presumption of unifying the
jihad among Sunni Iraq and Syria.”
Given this
information, the US and its allies increased
their support for the Syrian opposition
throughout the next two years. Indeed, it was
our “major
Arab allies” that funded the rise of the
Islamic State.
This
wasn’t a secret however, the Saudi Foreign
Minister himself told John Kerry that
the Islamic State was a Saudi creation,
stating to him that “Daesh [Isis] is our [Sunni]
response to your support for the Da’wa” — the
Tehran-aligned Shia Islamist ruling party of
Iraq.
During
this time the US enjoyed an intimate
relationship with the Saudi’s vis-à-vis their
mutual Syria policy, the Saudi’s provided the
weapons and petrodollars for the rebels in
exchange for “a
seat at the table” and to say “what the
agenda is going to be.” That agenda, according
to the
2012 DIA report, was “the possibility of
establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist
principality in eastern Syria” which was
“exactly what the supporting powers to the
opposition want” given their desire “to isolate
the Syrian regime, which is considered the
strategic depth of the Shia expansion” from Iran
and into Iraq.
This was
confirmed by then head of the DIA, Lt. Gen.
Michael Flynn, who stated that it had been a “willful
decision” for the administration to ignore
the intelligence warnings of an impending
Islamic State and to instead continue on with
their policy regardless.
This all
in turn led to a situation in 2014 in which ISIS
was mobilizing as a potent force, and began to
make its push into Iraq.
According
to high level officials, the US “had significant
intelligence about the pending Islamic State
offensive… For the US military, it was an open
secret at the time… It surprised no one.”
The US
though, did nothing.
According
to the
WSJ, “the failure to confront ISIS sooner
wasn't an intelligence failure. It was a failure
by policy makers to act on events that were
becoming so obvious that the Iraqis were asking
for American help for months before Mosul fell.
Mr. Obama declined to offer more than token
assistance.”
Yet there
is no need to speculate on why nothing was done,
Obama told us himself.
The
strategy was to utilize the ISIS attack as a
means to pressure the Iraqi Prime Minister, in
an effort to lead to his ouster. The reason
“that we did not just start taking a bunch of
airstrikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came
in,”
Obama explained, was because “that would
have taken the pressure off of Maliki.”
Not long
after Maliki stepped down, and Abadi took his
place. ISIS, however, remained a potent force
in Iraq for years to come, paving the way for
the attacks last week, killing upwards of 300,
unfortunately only one among many others.
Turning
back to France, the continual occurrence of
terrorist activity is intimately tied in with
involvement in the Syria crisis.
This being
only months after the DIA
had warned “the Salafists, the Muslim
Brotherhood, and AQI (Al-Qaeda in Iraq)” were
“the major forces driving the insurgency.”
And while
France justified its involvement through talk of
a “moderate opposition”, the CIA’s point-man,
sent to the country throughout 2012 to meet with
the rebels, saw for himself that “there
were no moderates” there at that time.
It was
France’s policy of attempting to oust Assad that
directly led to the rise of extremist jihadis
inside Syria and Iraq, yet the media
establishment is criminally ignorant to these
underlying geopolitical machinations.
Former MI6
officer Alastair Crooke describes the situation
as such: “the jihadification of the Syrian
conflict had been a “willful” policy decision,
and that since Al Qaeda and the ISIS embryo were
the only movements capable of establishing such
a Caliphate across Syria and Iraq, then it
plainly followed that the U.S. administration,
and its allies, tacitly accepted this outcome,
in the interests of weakening, or of
overthrowing, the Syrian state.”
He notes
that this strategy dates back to the Cold War,
in which “setting the destruction of secular
nationalism [was] its overwhelming priority,”
and therefore, “America by default found itself
compelled to be allied with the Gulf Kings and
Emirs who traditionally have resorted to Sunni
jihadism as the inoculation against democracy.”
This
continued on into the Bush administration: “The
2003 war in Iraq had not brought about the
pro-Israeli, pro-American regional bloc that had
been foreseen by the neocons, but rather, it had
stimulated a powerful “Shia Crescent” of
resistance stretching from Iran to the
Mediterranean,” causing the Sunni states to be
“petrified of a Shiite resurgence”, and thus
necessitating the creation of a Sunni proxy
force that could rival Hezbollah and Iran, which
found its realization in al-Qaeda and ISIS in
Syria.
Indeed,
Obama and Biden both admitted that they did not
believe in the farce of arming “moderates”,
Obama stating that “When you have a
professional army that is well-armed and
sponsored by two large states who have huge
stakes in this, and they are fighting against a
farmer, a carpenter, an engineer who started out
as protesters and suddenly now see themselves in
the midst of a civil conflict, the notion that
we could have, in a clean way that
didn’t commit U.S. military forces, changed the
equation on the ground there was never true.”
(Emphasis added) Biden bluntly summarized: “there
was no moderate middle because the moderate
middle are made up of shopkeepers, not
soldiers.”
And so
“the answer as so often was to move to more
covert means… by increasing the clandestine
operations in support of the opposition
including the jihadists.”
Yet this
even goes a step further, with the French
authorities tacitly allowing or even encouraging
the flow of French nationals into Syria.
In 2013
Foreign Policy put out a story noting that
upwards of 1,000 European nationals were
travelling into Syria. The headline read
“Hundreds are joining the fight against Assad.
Will they return as terrorists?”
The French
Interior Minister counted at least 140 French
citizens making the sojourn, and while he
admitted that “It is a ticking time bomb,” no
actual concern or alarm was raised to do
something about it.
“For the
time being,” the Minister said, “there is no
legal basis for arresting the European jihadists
or barring them from leaving or entering
France.” He further justified the lack of
action by stating that “The fighters in Syria
are not fighting France or Europe; they are
fighting against the Assad regime. It’s not
against French law to fight in a war, but it is
a crime to participate in a terrorist
organization."
Former
counter-terrorism officer and Scotland Yard
detective
Charles Shoebridge explains the situation
further: “For the first two of the last three
years, countries such as the UK and France did
little to stem the flow of their citizens to an
already destabilised Syria and Libya, perhaps
believing these jihadists would serve Western
foreign policy objectives in attacking Gaddafi
and Assad for example.”
“Only when
domestic intelligence services began to warn of
the dangers of blowback from such people, and
when groups such as ISIS began over the last
year to turn against the West in Iraq and Syria
for example, was any real action taken to stop
the flow of UK and French citizens to what, in
effect, were largely western policy created
terrorist recruiting and training grounds. By
then, as Europe seems increasingly likely to
experience, it was already too late.”
Yet action
did not include halting Western involvement in
the Syrian war, which created the threat of
terrorism in the first place, nor did it consist
of ending involvement with Turkey, Saudi Arabia,
and Qatar, who are
the principle supporters of the terrorist
movements.
Instead,
what was done was business-as-usual: a state of
emergency, more lockdowns, infringements on
civil liberties and freedoms, and more
aggressive war-posturing which sees the threat
of terrorism as something you can bomb away,
while neglecting all of its true sources.
In a
detailed analysis by Britain’s leading
international security scholar,
Dr. Nafeez Ahmed notes that President
Hollande’s reactive declaration of war “We will
continue striking those who attack us on our own
soil” is not solely a reference to Syria but as
well to France’s current military involvement
against Islamists in North Africa.
“Over the
last half decade, Islamist militant factions
affiliated to both the Islamic State and
al-Qaeda have dramatically expanded their
foothold in North Africa,” Ahmed writes,
“spurred by the vacuum left from the aborted
NATO war on Libya.”
The
military-security architecture in the region is
led by the United States, under the jurisdiction
of AFRICOM.
Yet Ahmed
notes that “Intelligence documents… prove that…
the US, British and French were well aware that
Algerian military intelligence had played a
double-game, covertly financing al-Qaeda
affiliated militants as a mechanism to
consolidate its domestic control, and project
power abroad.” This al-Qaeda threat spilled
over into Mali, “But instead of cracking down
hard on Algeria’s state-sponsorship of Islamist
terror, the US and British turned a blind eye,
and the French invaded Mali.”
The French now have a permanent military
presence in Mali, first envisioned as a means to
rollback the Islamist uprising yet which has
instead “seen an intensification of Islamic
violence,” and has transformed itself into “a
semi-colonial arrangement,” which lends support
to brutal government repression that only
further exacerbates tensions in the region.
Ahmed
notes that “Ongoing secretive operations and
draconian abuses, along with extensive support
for repressive regimes, one of which – Algeria –
directly sponsored some of the Islamist factions
running riot across the region, serves to stoke
local grievances, but does little to shut down
the terror networks… The US-French support for
the region’s repressive governments, in the name
of counter-terrorism, stokes further
resentment.”
Yet Dr.
Ahmed also points out that in the same way local
grievances in France are as well exacerbated by
a similar approach of expanded state
repression. Arbitrary house searches, the
targeting of Muslims based upon religious
affiliation rather than actual evidence, the
arbitrary and unjustified closing down of
mosques, all serve to create an environment in
which the French government has “trampled on the
rights of hundreds of men, women and children,
leaving them traumatised and stigmatised,” resulting
in “already marginalised Muslim communities in
France experiencing routine state abuses.”
What all
of this does is strengthen al-Qaeda, ISIS, and
all other extremist elements which depend upon
the brutal repression of Muslims to give
legitimacy to their propaganda. Propaganda
which states that the West is the enemy of all
Muslims, that in Western countries they will
only face repression, brutality, and abuse, and
so therefore must join in the jihad against the
Western enemy, or if not be branded as apostates
and live under the torment of the Western
regimes.
The more
we respond to terror with further abuses and
more wars, the more the engine that marginalizes
disenfranchised populations will continue making
them vulnerable to extremist manipulation.
The major
sources of these events can be deduced and
intelligent steps can be implemented to prevent
against their occurrence, yet the reaction taken
after each continues to neglect logic and
reasoning and perpetuates actions that
exacerbate, rather than mitigate, the problem.
At the center of these follies is the persistent
prioritization of acquisitions of power,
imperialism, and resource domination that
sideline concerns about terrorism. Often these
pursuits utilize the veiled pretext of
“anti-terrorism” to justify their aims, aims
which in fact support the very terror that they
claim to oppose. In Syria, the fight against
ISIS is waged by supporting an al-Qaeda
dominated insurgency, while in North Africa
counter-terrorism serves as a pretext for
military expansion, increasing the grievances
which lead to more terror.
The
predictable result of all of this is more
terror, more wars, more oppression, and more
death.
Only when
pressure is put on those states, interests, and
agencies to halt their selfish lusting for power
will the terrorism ever truly cease.
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Steven
Chovanec is a student of International
Studies and Sociology at Roosevelt
University. Independent, open-source
geopolitical research & analysis. Follow on
Twitter @stevechovanec - Facebook
facebook.com/stevechovanec - Tsu
http://www.tsu.co/stevechovanec -
e-mail:
schovanec@mail.roosevelt.edu
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