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The 9/11 attacks, in Filiu’s compelling analysis, were a bonanza for the Arab dictators and their “security mafias,” who cooperated willingly with George Bush’s “global war on terror.” Rendition and torture were the backdrop to Tony Blair’s grubby flirtation with Muammar Gaddafi. In Yemen Ali Abdullah Saleh tightened his grip on an ever-expanding security apparatus in the battle against al-Qaida while secretly colluding with the terrorists to keep their menace usefully alive. Egypt proved its enduring worth to the US as the guardian of the peace treaty with Israel.
The master, though was Bashar al-Assad. After the 2003 US invasion of Iraq, he backed the Sunni insurgency next door and used the post-Saddam chaos to justify repression at home. Ali Mamluk, one of his top security chiefs, famously met US officials and boasted of Syria’s ability in penetrating terrorist groups. In 2011 Assad first denied the existence of popular and mostly peaceful protests and then blamed them on captured “terrorists” who “confessed” to their crimes on camera. He carried out what Filiu calls “a highly selective amnesty” - releasing Islamists from prison: one went to Iraq to join al-Qaida and later founded Jabhat al-Nusra, its Syrian affiliate. Assad’s “self-fulfilling prophecy” became true.
Iraq’s Nouri al-Maliki, like Assad a close ally of Iran, helped fuel a vicious Sunni insurgency by his unbridled Shia sectarianism. The outcome, promoted by the mayhem in Syria, is a transnational jihadi movement that morphed into Isis, captured Mosul and declared its “caliphate” a year ago.
full: http://www.theguardian.com/world/on-the-middle-east/2015/jun/26/from-deep-state-to-islamic-state-by-jean-pierre-filiu-review
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