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OpEdNews Op Eds    H2'ed 11/11/14

The endgame of the US 'Islamic State' strategy

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The pro-Iran government of former Prime Minister Noori al-Maliki was squeezed by the IS military advances to "request" US help, which Washington preconditioned on the removal of al-Maliki, to which Iran acquiesced. However, al-Maliki's replacement by Haider al-Abadi in August has changed nothing so far in the sectarian component of the Iraqi government and army. US support of Iraq under his premiership boils down to supporting continued sectarianism in the country, which is the incubator of the survival of its IS antithesis.

Moreover, the destruction of the Iraqi state infrastructure, especially the dismantling of Iraq's national army and security agencies and the Iraqi Baath party that held them intact, following the US invasion, has created a power vacuum which neither the US occupation forces nor the sectarian Shiite militias could fill. The IS was not powerful in itself. It just stepped in to a no-man's land.

Similarly, some four years of a US-led "regime change" effort in Syria, initially spearheaded by the Muslim Brotherhood and which is still financed, armed and logistically facilitated by US regional allies in Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia as well as by allied Western intelligence services, has created another power vacuum, especially in border areas and in particular in the northern and eastern areas bordering Turkey and Iraq.

US Senator Rand Paul in an interview with CNN last June 22 was more direct, accusing the Obama administration of "arming" and creating an IS "safe haven" in Syria, which "created a vacuum" filled by the IS.

"We have been fighting alongside al Qaeda, fighting alongside ISIS. ISIS is now emboldened and in two countries. But here's the anomaly: We're with ISIS in Syria, we're on the same side of the war. So those who want to stop ISIS in Iraq are allied with ISIS in Syria. That is the real contradiction to this whole policy," he said.

The 16 - year Congressman and two-time US presidential candidate Dennis Kucinich, writing in the http://www.huffingtonpost.com last September 24, summed it up: The IS "was born of Western intervention in Iraq and covert action in Syria."

The US 'Trojan horse'

The IS could have considered playing the role of a US "Frankenstein," but in fact it is serving as the US "Trojan horse" into Syria and Iraq. Fighting the IS was the US tactic, not the US strategy.

On record, Iranian deputy foreign minister Hossein Amir-Abdollahian said that "the best way of fighting ISIS and terrorism in the region is to help and strengthen the Iraqi and Syrian governments, which have been engaged in a serious struggle" against it. But this would not serve the endgame of Obama's strategy, which targets both governments instead.

Beneficiaries of the IS "Trojan horse" leave no doubt about the Syrian, Iranian and Russian endgame of the US-led so-callled war on the IS.

The United States was able finally to bring a long awaited "front of moderates" against Iran and Syria into an active "air-striking" alliance, ostensibly against the IS.

In Iraq, the IS served the US strategy of wrestling back the so called "political process" from Iranian influence via the former premier al-Maliki. Installing a US Iraqi satellite was the strategic goal of the US-led invasion and occupation of Iraq in 2003. Instead, according to Doug Bandow, writing in Forbes on last October 14, "Bush's legacy was a corrupt, authoritarian, and sectarian state, friendly with Iran and Syria, Washington's prime adversaries in the Middle East. Even worse was the emergence of the Islamic State."

This counterproductive outcome of the US invasion, which saw Iran wielding the reigns of power in Baghdad and edging Iraq closer to Syria and Iran during the eight years of al-Maliki's premiership, turned red lights on in the White House and the capitals of its regional allies.

Al-Maliki, whom Bush had designated as "our guy" in Baghdad when he facilitated his premiership in 2006, turned against his mentors, edging Iraq closer to the Syrian and Iranian poles of the "axis of evil." Consequently he opposed western or Israeli military attacks on Iran, at least from or via Iraqi territory. In Syria, he opposed regime change in Damascus, rejected direct military "foreign intervention" and indirect proxy intervention and insisted that a "political solution" is the only way forward for Iraq's western Arab neighbor.

Worse still was his opening Iraq up to rival Chinese and Russian hydrocarbon investments, bringing Iraq into an Iran-Iraq-Syria oil and gas pipeline project and buying weapons from the Russian Federation.

Al- Maliki had to go. He was backed by Iran to assume asecond term as prime minister in spite of the US, which had backed the winner of the 2010 elections for the post, Ayad Allawi. The US had its revenge in the 2014 elections. Al-Maliki won the elections, but was denied a third term thanks to US pressure.

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*Nicola Nasser is a veteran Arab journalist in Kuwait, Jordan, UAE and Palestine. He is based in Ramallah, West Bank of the Israeli-occupied Palestinian territories.
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