US intellectual and commentator Noam Chomsky explains the likely consequences of US plans to attack Iraq to Nermeen Al-Mufti.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend: was this US President Barack Obama’s view of the armed Islamist groups in Syria until he lost control of them?
Obama didn’t arm the groups directly. He indirectly facilitated arming from the Gulf states, though the US contribution was apparently not a major one. And the US never controlled them. The most careful and knowledgeable analyst of what is happening is [journalist] Patrick Cockburn, who has pointed out that the US policy is contradictory in supporting the Iraqi government against the Islamic State (IS) and seeking to undermine the most potent opposition to it, Syria’s President Bashar Al-Assad. The contradictions run through the whole “war on terror” and help to account for its catastrophic failures. The US has refused to confront its two allies, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. Pakistan was supporting the Taliban, and Saudi money was financing the jihadi movements while Saudi missionary zeal in spreading its extremist Wahabi/Salafist doctrines was inspiring them.
The situation in Iraq caused by the Americans has been a moral and political failure. Why did Obama put aside the Iraq-US Security Agreement at the beginning of the IS operations? His opposition to former Iraqi prime minister Nuri Al-Maliki did not give him an excuse. Obama may be trying to avoid action in Iraq to show the American public the mistakes committed by the former Bush administration in the country. Could his strategy be to push American voters towards the Democratic Party?
What “real action” could be carried out that would not make the situation worse? It is true that public opinion strongly opposes dispatching ground forces, but the same is true of the foreign policy elites and regional specialists, with rare exceptions.
The power-sharing policy drawn up by the US for Iraq generated the ongoing conflicts among the leading political blocs in the country, and has led to the ongoing corruption and violence. How can the situation be resolved? US Vice-President Joe Biden, who once said that “Iraq will be one of the greatest achievements of this administration”, has now become the person working to divide the country. How do you think Iraq can be divided as long as the Kurds are being supported internationally?
From the beginning of the military occupation, US policy has encouraged sectarianism. And it goes beyond that. One of the leading mainstream specialists, former CIA officer Graham Fuller, writes that “I think the United States is one of the key creators of [ISIS]. The United States did not plan the formation of ISIS, but its destructive interventions in the Middle East and the war in Iraq were the basic causes of the birth of ISIS. You will remember that the starting point of this organisation was to protest the US invasion of Iraq. In those days it was supported by many non-Islamist Sunnis as well because of their opposition to Iraq’s occupation.” Hitting a fragile system with a sledgehammer is likely to have unanticipated and very harmful effects. The outcome is even worse than could have been reasonably predicted.
Do you think the US will agree to let Al-Assad enter the coalition against the extremists along with Iran?
Unlikely. So far, the US has insisted that Iran be formally excluded from the anti-IS coalition, though they would surely be a major contributor. There presumably are informal contacts.
Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi has stated that solving the Palestinian-Israeli problem would stop the extremists and the terror. Do you think he is right?
I haven’t seen that statement. But it is not correct. At best, solving the issue might weaken some of the factors that are inflaming the jihadi movements.
Will Turkey under the ruling AKP and Recep Tayyip Erdogan join a coalition against the extremists? Many think that Turkey has become a route for extremists going to Syria and Iraq.
Until now, Turkey has kept its borders open, a great boon to IS and other similar factions. It may be that Turkey is now sufficiently concerned with their extraordinary success to change course.
The Arab Spring has now become the “extremists’ spring” as a result of the violence in the Arab Spring countries. Where are these countries and the region headed?
Tunisia, which opened the Arab Spring, is doing moderately well. Egypt has deteriorated to some of its darkest days. Libya is a total wreck, though it might have had a chance if the imperial triumvirate had not instantly violated the resolution it had rammed through the UN Security Council and had adopted the plans put forth by the African Union, which were simply dismissed. Syria we need not discuss. The Gulf states managed to repress limited efforts to join the Arab Spring. And of course by now IS has become a virtual state in large parts of Syria and Iraq, with threats extending beyond them.
To what extent has Qatar been involved in the extremist operations in Syria and Iraq?
In Syria, Qatar was funding some of the jihadi groups, as was Saudi Arabia (though their choices are often opposed). But now they have spread into Iraq. Saudi influence goes well beyond funding. As I mentioned earlier, Saudi Arabia has used its vast wealth to promulgate its radical fundamentalist version of Islam to the entire region. That has played a considerable role in inflaming extremist doctrines and stimulating efforts to impose them.
Is there any light at the end of the tunnel created by the American “war on terror”?
The American “war on terror” was declared by former US president Ronald Reagan in 1981. Its impact was so catastrophic that it has now been wiped out of acceptable history. The war that former president George W. Bush re-declared in 2001, carried forward by Barack Obama, has succeeded in vastly expanding the jihadi-style terror that was targeted. More of the same is likely to produce more of the same.
Is there any way aside from war to solve the problem of extremism?
We should bear in mind that the most extreme of the extremists are the traditional imperial powers. The US-UK invasion of Iraq, apart from its devastating impact on Iraq, elicited sectarian conflicts that are now tearing the region to shreds. The imperial sledgehammer has been highly destructive over the centuries. Dealing with the extremist forces that have been unleashed in the region, which of course have domestic roots as well, will be an arduous task and will have to be led within the region itself if it is to have any chance of success. The populations have legitimate demands: for peace, freedom, democracy, economic development in the general interest, basic human rights, and so on. Moves to satisfy these demands are the only way I know to try to solve the issue.
Could dialogue between the religions be a solution?
It might help, if it was conducted seriously.
This interview was first published in the Iraqi daily Al-Sabah.
