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On 4/12/15 6:20 PM, Andrew Pollack wrote:
where's the original Cockburn article?
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/in-the-middle-east-our-enemys-enemy-must-be-our-friend-10169984.html
Since the Independent has a 5 article limit per month (or something like
that), let me post the entire article:
In the Middle East, our enemy's enemy must be our friend
Al-Qaeda-type movements are gaining ground, and there's only one way to
stop them
PATRICK COCKBURN
Sunday 12 April 2015
The ghost of Osama bin Laden will have been chuckling this month as he
watches the movements he inspired conquer swathes of the Middle East. He
will be particularly gratified to see fighters from Al-Qaeda in the
Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) storm into Al Mukalla, the capital of Yemen’s
eastern province of Hadhramaut from which the bin Laden family
originated before making their fortune in Saudi Arabia.
As happened in Mosul, Iraq last summer when the Iraqi army fled before a
jihadi attack, Yemeni government soldiers abandoned their bases in Al
Mukalla leaving US Humvees and other military equipment. Earlier, AQAP
had seized the central prison in the city and freed 300 prisoners,
including Khaled Batarfi, one of the most important jihadi leaders in Yemen.
It is a measure of the severity of the multiple crises engulfing the
region that AQAP, previously said by the United States to be the most
dangerous branch of al-Qaeda, can capture a provincial capital without
attracting more than cursory attention in the outside world. How
different it was on 2 May 2011 when President Obama and much of his
administration had themselves pictured watching the helicopter raid on
Abbottabad, Pakistan where bin Laden was killed. The grandstanding gave
the impression that his death meant that the perpetrators of 9/11 had
finally been defeated.
Protesters in Washington march near the White House last week Protesters
in Washington march near the White House last week (AP)
But look at the map today as unitary Muslim states dissolve or weaken
from the north-west frontier of Pakistan to the north-east corner of
Nigeria. The beneficiaries are al-Qaeda or al-Qaeda inspired groups
which are growing in power and influence. The US and its allies
recognise this, but cannot work out how to prevent it.
“It’s always easier to conduct counter-terrorism when there’s a stable
government in place,” said the US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter,
rather plaintively, last week. “That circumstance obviously doesn’t
exist in Yemen.”
You can say that again. Mr Carter sounded a little put out that
“terrorists” have not chosen well-ordered countries such as Denmark or
Canada in which to base themselves, and are instead operating in
anarchic places like Yemen, Iraq, Syria, Libya and Somalia, where there
is no government to stop them. Suddenly, the drone war supposedly
targeting leaders and supporters of al-Qaeda in Yemen, Pakistan and
Somalia is exposed as the politically convenient irrelevance it always
was. In fact, it was worse than an irrelevance, because the use of
drones, and periodic announcements about the great success they were
having, masked America’s failure to develop an effective policy for
destroying al-Qaeda in the years since 9/11.
Al Mukalla was not the only victory of an al-Qaeda affiliate in recent
weeks. In northern Syria, al-Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate, Jabhat al-Nusra,
led an attack force of between 4,000 and 5,000 jihadis to capture the
provincial capital of Idlib whose Syrian army garrison was overwhelmed.
Saudi sources revealed that Saudi Arabia and Turkey had both given their
backing to Jabhat al-Nusra and other extreme jihadis in seizing Idlib.
Saudi Arabia and other Sunni states seem intent on rebranding Jabhat
al-Nusra and its clones as wholly different from Islamic State (Isis)
and therefore acceptable as a potential ally. Al-Nusra may not publicly
revel in its own atrocities as does Isis, but otherwise it differs
little from it in ideology and tactics. Created by Isis in 2012, it
split from the parent movement and fought a bloody inter-rebel civil war
against it in early 2014, but today there are worrying signs of
cooperation. According to accounts from the Syrian opposition, it was
al-Nusra that allowed Isis fighters to take over in recent days most of
Yarmouk Palestinian camp a few miles from the centre of Damascus.
For all the billions of dollars spent on security since 9/11, the
tedious searches at airports, the restrictions on civil liberties,
tolerance of torture – not to mention the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan –
the so-called “war on terror” is being very publicly lost. The heirs of
9/11 are far stronger than ever. As argued previously in this column,
there are seven wars going on in Muslim countries between Pakistan and
Nigeria and in all of them al-Qaeda-type movements are gaining in
strength or are already strong. It would be astonishing if these
conflicts did not at some point produce extreme violence in nearby
countries such as the massacre of Christian students by Somali gunmen in
Kenya or the killing of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists, police and Jewish
shoppers in Paris. Given that there are 2.8 million Muslims in Britain,
4.1 million in Germany and 5 million in France, al-Qaeda-type movements
are bound to find some supporters.
What should be done? The only way of dealing with Isis, al-Qaeda and
other jihadi movements is in the countries where they flourish. The
great mistake after 9/11 was for Washington to absolve Saudi Arabia of
responsibility – though 15 of the 19 hijackers, bin Laden himself, and
much of the money spent on the operation came from Saudi Arabia – as
well as Pakistan, which had propelled bin Laden’s hosts, the Taliban,
into power in Afghanistan.
Once again al-Qaeda-type movements are not being targeted effectively
despite their many enemies. This failure can best be explained by a
saying popular a few months ago among western politicians and diplomats
to explain their policy in Syria and Iraq. This was “the enemy of my
enemy is not necessarily my friend”.
Few of those who pronounced these glib but shallow words had thought
them through or appreciated that, if this was indeed the policy of the
US, Britain and their allies, then there is no way the Isis, Jabhat
al-Nusra or AQAP can be defeated. In Yemen, the Houthis are the
strongest military force opposing AQAP, but since we support Saudi
Arabia in its air campaign against the Houthis we are ensuring a
situation in which AQAP will be able to expand. Since the Saudis’ stated
aim is to restore to power President Abd-Rabbu Hadi, who has almost no
support (those described as his supporters are mostly southern
secessionists), the chief beneficiary of prolonged war will be AQAP.
In Syria, similarly, “the enemy of our enemy” and the strongest military
force is the Syrian army, though it shows signs of weakening after four
years of war. But if we have decided that US air power is not to be used
against Isis or Jabhat al-Nusra when they are fighting the Syrian army
because we want to get rid of President Bashar al-Assad, then this is a
decision that benefits Isis, Jabhat al-Nusra and extreme jihadis. In
Iraq the situation is less dire because, although there is a pretence of
not cooperating with the Shia militias, in practice the US had been
launching air strikes on the same Isis positions these militia are
attacking on the ground. The reality is that it is only by supporting
“the enemy of my enemy” that the expansion of al-Qaeda and its
lookalikes can be beaten back and the movement defeated.
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