How vested interests trump everything good
Few in Arabia talk about the so-called Arab Spring anymore. In Tunisia, Egypt, Libya and especially Syria, what the western press recently romanticised as revolution has in fact turned out a sweeping victory for the Islamic far right, carefully funded and pushed through by a fast growing Saudi-Qatari alliance within the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). It has been interesting, though, to note how conveniently Washington has greenlighted Al-Qaeda linked jihadi influence in the wake of the Spring, despite its experiences in Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan.
John Kerry’s recent visit to the Middle East only confirmed suspicion that the US will influence arms transfer to Syria to the benefit of the rebel army battling President Bashar al Assad’s forces. He made a point of stressing that such shipments would not fall into the hands of the jabhat al Nusra, the Al-Qaeda affiliate also fighting the government. He also said, as did his Saudi, Qatari and Turkish counterparts, that the rebel Free Syrian Army (FSA) needed more arms to offset the increasing muscle of jabhat al Nusra. But nobody made any mention of just who was funding and arming Al-Qaeda associates across the region.
It is no secret, especially for the Pakistani audience, that almost all things Al-Qaeda are traced to the American-Saudi-Pakistani intelligence model that spawned the mujahideen of the Soviet jihad. Since then, these soldier clerics have spread via heavy funding from mostly Saudi based wahabis, whose madrassahs across Pakistan and Afghanistan produced the initial band of global jihadists that subsequently set up franchises across Asia, Arabia and Africa.
Their growing strength captured public attention after 9/11, hence the 12 years (so far) of the war on terror. But official US policy, of destroying Al-Qaeda whenever and wherever it relocates, is not matched by its actions, especially as radical jihadists have spread their influence in the Middle East, Maghreb and the Levant.
It became clear very early in the Spring, particularly in Tunisia and Egypt, that not just the semi-radical Islamic Brotherhood, but also Salafi proper groups would benefit the most from the fall of long standing, US-backed dictatorships. Arab regimes were built on long years of internal repression that did not allow the growth of a moderate political class, which is why varying shades of extreme Islam, nurtured on an ideology of politically motivated jihad, mobilised very quickly to fill vacuums.
For the record, Washington was wrongfooted till the uprisings reached Libya – Hillary called Hosni “practically family” till just a few days before his resignation. And it was not too hard to rally western opinion against “madman of the Middle East” Gaddafi, which is also when US-Saudi interests were increasingly aligned. Gaddafi sat atop light-sweet crude, among the finest quality oil on the planet. For the west, time was right to bring more of that wealth to its corporations, the Exxon Mobils of this world, while for Riyadh, dividing the whole region into Wahabi-Salafi proxies seemed within reach. So Washington conveniently turned a blind eye to Al-Qaeda militias funneled into Libya, funded by Saudi and Qatari petrodollars. It was not until Libya had been handed over to a puppet regime that the depth of Al-Qaeda infiltration started becoming clear.
But that did not stop a repeat performance in Syria, where the ruling Alawi regime – an offshoot of Shia Islam and strategic partner of Iran – was declared fair game in the drive to “liberate” the country. And once again the Sauds, aided by the Qatari royal family and Turkey’s ruling party, flushed the country with jihadists from across the world. Even the Pakistani tribal insurgency lost a bunch of precious Arab fighters to the Syrian cause, where they found US backed momentum far more to their liking than military action and drone bombardment in the AfPak region.
Now the Syrian civil war has entered its third year, turning the country into a proxy sectarian battle field, and threatening to spill over into the wider neighbourhood. For the US, Bashar’s fall will weaken Iran and Hezbollah, dealing the proverbial kiss of death to the long standing anti-Israeli resistance. And for the Saudis, it will counter Iran’s Shia allies, expanding the Wahabi kingdom’s sphere of influence. Yet sending more arms to aid the Syrian rebellion will invariably play into the hands of extremist Al-Qaeda forces, which are the most potent among anti-regime militias.
American and Saudi funded rebel training camps in Turkey and Jordan are reminiscent of the mujahideen camps on the Pak-Afghan border not long ago. In destroying the Middle East’s last Baathist dynastic dictatorship, Washington and its friends in Riyadh risk plunging the whole region into an expanded theatre of Al-Qaeda insurgency that will aim to hit Israel on one side, Iran on the other, and one which will not spare its Saudi patrons, who are, after all, American allies in the region. It will not be long before the Israelis understand the magnitude of the threat from Al-Qaeda just as it strengthens across the Golan Heights, and realises that for all its faults, the Assad regime was the lesser evil so far as Israeli interests were concerned. There will be no bigger proof of how little America learns from its own mistakes.
The writer is Middle East correspondent, Pakistan Today.