In order to answer this question, one has to liberate the
argument from its geopolitical and ideological confines.
Many in the media (Western, Arab, etc) use the reference
“Islamist” to brand any movement at all whether it be political, militant or
even charity-focused.
If it is dominated by men with beards or women with
headscarves that make references to the Holy Koran and Islam as the motivator
behind their ideas, violent tactics or even good deeds, then the word “Islamist”
is the language of choice.
According to this overbearing logic, a Malaysia-based
charity can be as “Islamist” as the militant group Boko Haram in Nigeria.
When the term “Islamist” was first introduced to the
debate on Islam and politics, it carried mostly intellectual connotations. Even
some “Islamists” used it in reference to their political thought. Now it can be
moulded to mean many things.
This is not the only convenient term that is being tossed
around so deliberately in the discourse pertaining to Islam and politics.
Many
are already familiar with how the term “terrorism” manifested itself in the
myriad ways that fit any country’s national or foreign policy agenda — from the
US’s George W Bush to Russia’s Vladimir Putin.
In fact, some of these leaders accused one another of
practising, encouraging or engendering terrorism while positioning themselves
as the crusaders against terror.
The US version of the “war on terror” gained much
attention and ill repute because it was highly destructive. But many other
governments launched their own wars against terrorism with various degrees of
violent outcomes.
The flexibility of the usage of language very much stands
at the heart of the Isis story.
We are told the group is mostly made of foreign
jihadists. This claim may have much truth to it but it cannot be accepted
without contention.
Why does the government of Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad insist on the “foreign jihadists” narrative — and did so even when the
civil war plaguing his country was still in its infancy, teetering between a
popular uprising and an armed insurgency?
It is for the same reason that Israel insists on infusing
the Iranian threat and its supposedly “genocidal” intentions towards Israel in
every discussion about the Hamas-led resistance in Palestine and Hezbollah’s in
Lebanon.
There are ample examples of governments of the Middle
East invoking the “foreign menace” factor when dealing with solely internal
phenomena, violent or otherwise.
The logic behind it is simple — if the Syrian civil war
is fuelled by foreign fanatics, then Assad can exact his violence against
rebelling Syrians in the name of fighting the foreigners/jihadists/terrorists.
Netanyahu remains the master of political diversion. He
vacillates between peace talks and Iran-backed Palestinian “terror” groups in
whatever way he finds suitable.
The desired outcome is placing Israel as a victim of, and
a crusader against, foreign-inspired terrorism.
Just days after Israel carried
out what was described by many as a genocide in Gaza — killing over 2,200 and
wounding over 11,000 — he once more tried to shift global attention by claiming
that the so-called Islamic State was at the Israeli border.
For the US and its Western allies, the logic behind their
latest war is hardly removed from the war discourse engendered by previous US
administrations, most notably that of Bush and his father.
It is another chapter of the unfinished wars that the US
has unleashed in Iraq over the last 25 years. In some ways, Isis, with its
brutal tactics, is the worst possible manifestation of US interventionism.
In the first Iraq war (1990-91), the US-led coalition
seemed determined to achieve the clear goal of driving the Iraqi army out of
Kuwait, and to use that as a starting point to achieve complete US dominance
over the Middle East.
Back then, president George HW Bush feared that pushing
beyond that goal could lead to the kind of consequences that would alter the
entire region and empower Iran at the expense of Washington’s Arab
allies.
Instead of carrying out regime change in Iraq itself, the
US opted to subject Iraq to a decade of economic torment — a suffocating
blockade that resulted in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi
civilians. That was the golden age of US’s “containment” policy in the region.
However, US policy in the Middle East under Bush’s son,
GW Bush, was reinvigorated by new elements that somewhat altered the political landscape
leading to the second Iraq war in 2003.
Firstly, the attacks of September 11 2001 were dubiously
used to mislead the public into another war by linking Iraqi president Saddam
Hussein to al-Qaida, and secondly, the neoconservative political ideology came
to dominate Washington at the time, seizing on September 11 to push through its
plans for reviving US global dominance.
The neocons strongly believed in the regime-change
doctrine that has since then proven to be a complete failure. It was not just a
failure, but rather a calamity.
The rise of Isis is in fact a mere bullet point
in a tragic Iraq timeline which started the moment Bush began his “shock and
awe campaign.”
This was followed by the fall of Baghdad, the dismantling
of the country’s institutions, the de-Baathification of Iraq and the “mission
accomplished” speech.
Since then, it has been one setback after another.
The US
strategy in Iraq was predicated on destroying Iraqi nationalism and replacing
it with a dangerous form of sectarianism that used the proverbial “divide and
conquer” stratagem.
The US has indeed succeeded in dividing Iraq, maybe not
territorially, but certainly in every other way. Moreover, the war brought
al-Qaida to Iraq.
The group used the atrocities inflicted by the US war and
invasion to recruit fighters from Iraq and throughout the Middle East.
And like a bull in a china shop, the US wreaked more
havoc on Iraq, playing around with sectarian and tribal cards to lower the
intensity of the resistance and to busy Iraqis with fighting each other.
When US combat troops allegedly departed Iraq, al-Qaida
was supposedly weakened.
In actuality, at the eve of the US withdrawal,
al-Qaida had branched off into other militant manifestations.
They were able to move with greater agility in the region
and when the Syrian uprising was intentionally inflamed by regional and
international powers, al-Qaida resurfaced, fighting with prowess and
unparalleled influence.
Despite the misinformation about the roots of Isis, it
and al-Qaida in Iraq are the same. Their differences are an internal matter,
but their objectives are ultimately identical.
Western and Arab motives in the war against Isis might
differ but both sides have a keen interest in participating in the war and an
even keener interest in refusing to accept that such violence is not created in
a vacuum.
The US and its Western allies refuse to see the obvious
link between Isis, al-Qaida and the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan.
Arab leaders insist that their countries are also victims
of “Islamist” terror, produced not of their own anti-democratic and oppressive
policies, but by Chechen and other foreign fighters who are bringing dark-age
violence to otherwise perfectly peaceable and stable political
landscapes.
For the US-led coalition, Isis must exist, although every
member of the coalition has their own self-serving reasoning to explain their
involvement.
And since Isis is mostly made up of “foreign jihadists”
from faraway lands, speaking languages that few Arabs and Westerners understand
then, somehow, no-one is guilty and the current upheaval in the Middle East is
someone else’s fault.
Thus there is no need to speak of Syrian massacres or of
Iraq’s wars and its massacres, for the problem is obviously foreign.
If the so-called Islamic State didn’t exist, many in the
region would be keen on creating it.
