ISIS atrocities and us imperialism
September 8, 2014 <http://www.herald.co.zw/author/wmurape/> Wenceslaus
Murape <http://www.herald.co.zw/category/articles/opinion-a-analysis/>
Opinion & Analysis
Patrick Martin
The savage murder of US journalist Steven Sotloff has provoked justifiable
anger and revulsion among millions of people around the world. It is
necessary, however, not only to sympathise with Sotloff and his family, but
to understand the deeper causes of this tragedy.The murder, following that
of James Foley last month, is a further demonstration of both the
reactionary character of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and the
terrible consequences of a half-century of intervention in the Middle East
by US imperialism.
US Vice President Joseph Biden denounced the beheading of Sotloff in a
speech at a naval shipyard in New Hampshire, declaring that US military
forces would pursue ISIS to the gates of hell. But ISIS is not an
incomprehensible emanation of Satanic evil, as portrayed by the Obama
administration and the American media. It is a product of the policies of
the US government over a protracted period of time.
US administrations have sought to build up the most reactionary and backward
Islamic fundamentalist forces in the Middle East for many decades.
Throughout the Cold War, Washington mobilised them against secular
nationalist leaders viewed either as potential allies of the Soviet Union or
as direct threats to the profits and property of American and European
corporations.
The US cultivated similar forces in Egypt, including the Muslim Brotherhood,
to undermine the regime of Colonel Gamal Abdel Nasser, who nationalised the
Suez Canal and sought military aid from the Soviet Union.
In 1977, the CIA backed the coup in Pakistan carried out by Muhammad
Zia-ul-Haq, who established a martial law regime based on Islamist
fundamentalism that lasted until his death in 1988.
The security anchor of American policy in the Persian Gulf region,
particularly after the 1979 revolution that overthrew the Shah of Iran, was
an alliance with the monarchy in Saudi Arabia, which has long promoted the
most reactionary forms of Islamic fundamentalism as an ideological bulwark
for its parasitic rule.
The state of Israel pursued a similar policy, promoting the Muslim
Brotherhood affiliate in the occupied Palestinian territories as a rival to
undermine the Palestine Liberation Organization of Yasser Arafat, which it
viewed as the main enemy. Out of this effort would emerge Hamas and Islamic
Jihad.
Islamic fundamentalism became directly linked to terrorist violence through
the US campaign of subversion beginning in the late 1970s against the
pro-Soviet government in Afghanistan. The CIA, working with Saudi Arabia and
Pakistan, recruited Islamic fundamentalists from all over the world, trained
them in bomb-making and other terror tactics, and funnelled them to the
battlefield in Afghanistan.
Prominent among these was the son of a Saudi construction multi-millionaire,
Osama bin Laden.
The veterans of Afghanistan returned to their home countries, from Morocco
to Indonesia, spreading the influence of Islamic fundamentalism into
countries where it had never before existed. A key turning point was the
1990-91 Persian Gulf war, in which half a million US troops were deployed to
Saudi Arabia, prompting bin Laden and other Islamists to declare the United
States the main enemy.
In the wake of the 9/11 attacks, carried out by a group of predominantly
Saudi terrorists, several of them well known to the US intelligence
services, the Bush administration declared its war on terror against the
former US allies. However, this by no means signified a break with the
Islamic fundamentalists, many now operating under the umbrella of Al Qaeda,
as later events would show.
There remained a murky connection between US foreign policy and the radical
Islamists, most notably in Iraq, Libya and Syria, three countries ruled by
secular regimes that had largely suppressed the fundamentalist groups. The
US invasion and occupation of Iraq laid waste to the country, killing
hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and destroying the social and physical
infrastructure. The US-NATO intervention in Libya in 2011 employed elements
linked to Al Qaeda as its ground troops, leading to the current state of
political disintegration and civil war in that country.
In Syria, the CIA and US allies such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia directly
armed, financed and trained Islamic extremists to fight the government of
President Bashar al-Assad, which was allied to Iran and Russia. The
recipients of US aid included both the Al-Nusra Front, the Al Qaeda
affiliate in Syria, and ISIS, which advocated an even more extreme form of
Islamist terrorism than Al Qaeda, including the immediate establishment of a
caliphate on conquered territory in eastern Syria and western Iraq.
wsws.org.
Thé Mulindwas Communication Group
"With Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja and Dr. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda is in
anarchy"
Kuungana Mulindwa Mawasiliano Kikundi
"Pamoja na Yoweri Museveni, Ssabassajja na Dk. Kiiza Besigye, Uganda ni
katika machafuko"
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