Mahrukh A Mughal
OLIVER Stone is a famous writer and respected author. In 2016 at the Writers Guild Award ceremony he candidly and truthfully described the reasons and background of the wars, the West has been fighting for the last two decades. Some of his revelations are not only shocking but expose the role of big powers in de-stabilizing the world. According to him countries of the world have no doubt benefited a lot from America, but nonetheless, they have also terribly suffered at the hands of American short sightedness and self interest. Al-Qaeda and ISIS are the handiwork of America. The Taliban and the so-called jihadists were brazenly, created, promoted and prompted by the US Administrations, according to him. Added to that is the admission of Hillary Clinton, former Secretary of State and presidential candidate in 2016 about creation of such rogue outfits. On 11 August at an election rally, Donald Trump branded Obama and Hillary as the co-founder of ISIS.
Later the wars were nor American only but were joined by Europe and Canada too along with regional Arab States. The platform of NATO was conveniently used for this purpose. Early during the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq, the US covertly supplied arms to Al-Qaeda affiliated insurgents even while ostensibly supporting an emerging Shi’a-dominated administration. This was not the only way US strategy aided the rise of Zarqawi, a bin Laden mentee and brainchild of the extremist ideology that would later spawn into ‘ISIS.’ According to a little-known November report for the US Joint Special Operations University (JSOU) and Strategic Studies Department, “Dividing Our Enemies, post-invasion Iraq was an interesting case study of fanning discontent among enemies, leading to ‘red-against-red’ [enemy-against-enemy] firefights.” According to former French Foreign Minister Roland Dumas, Britain had planned covert action in Syria as early as 2009: “I was in England two years before the violence in Syria on other business,” he told French Television: “I met with top British officials, who confessed to me that they were preparing something in Syria. This was in Britain not in America. Britain was preparing gunmen to invade Syria.”
Leaked emails from the private intelligence firm Stratfor, including notes from a meeting with Pentagon officials, confirmed that as of 2011, US and UK special forces training of Syrian opposition forces was well underway. The goal was to elicit the “collapse” of Assad’s regime “from within.” The later events, much after the wars were over and withdrawal of western forces, were even more shocking and disturbing. One can vividly re-call the image of Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, the former US National Security Advisor, taking an aim with an AK-47, at the Soviet Union, while standing on the Pak-Afghan border in early eighties. This was the harbinger of American incursion and occupation in the region on the pretext of fighting the menace of communism. The Iran-Iraq war, the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, in recent history, were all planned, premeditated and strategized by American jingoism. The terrorism, as we understand it today and suffer from it, was brought forth by creating, inciting and blatantly helping jihadist groups through successive American initiatives, Donald Trump’s vow to eliminate the “radical Islamic terrorism” may serve as a policy ploy for his domestic audience, however, it castes large shadows of ill will by juxtaposing religion with any stand of terrorism. No religion, worth the name, does that. By his pronouncement, Trump has once again invited the ire of his fellow Muslim Americans. They have been exposed to a great risk of hate crimes by linking them with their Islamic identity in a dubious way. According to Dr. Nafeez Ahmed, a bestselling author, investigative journalist and international security scholar who has contributed to two major terrorism investigations in the US and UK, the 9/11 Commission and the 7/7 Coroner’s Inquest and has advised the Royal Military Academy Sandhust, British Foreign Office and US State Department and is a regular contributor to “The Guardian” where he writes about the geopolitics of interconnected environmental, energy and economic crises since 2003, Anglo-American power has secretly and openly coordinated direct and indirect support for Islamist terrorist groups linked to Al-Qaeda across the Middle East and North Africa.
This ill-conceived patchwork geo-strategy is a legacy of the persistent influence of neoconservative ideology, motivated by longstanding but often contradictory ambitions to dominate regional oil resources, defend an expansionist Israel and in pursuit of these, re-draw the map of the Middle East. In international press and media, however, there is a different narrative. Gen Martin Dempsey, former Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff said at a press briefing that “ISIS is an organisation that has an apocalyptic, end-of-days strategic vision which will eventually have to be defeated”. The then President Obama said military action is necessary to halt the spread of the ISIS “cancer”. He called for expanded airstrikes across Iraq and Syria, and new measures to arm and train Iraqi and Kurdish ground forces. The former British Prime Minister, David Cameron said, “The only way to defeat [IS] is to stand firm and to send a very straight forward message, ”he declared. “A country like ours will not be cowed by these barbaric killers. ”Despite Pentagon denials that there will be boots on the ground – and Obama’s insistence that this would not be another “Iraq war” – local Kurdish military and intelligence sources confirmed that US and German special operations forces were on the ground there. They helped and supported in the attacks.” US airstrikes on ISIS positions and arms supplies to the Kurds have also been accompanied by British RAF reconnaissance flights over the region along with UK weapons’ shipments to Kurdish Peshmerga forces.
— The author, a freelance columnist, is based in Lahore.
