- TERRORISM AND THE MIDDLE EAST'S DISINTEGRATION -
(english version)
The Middle East continues to burn: the fight against
IS goes foreward on more than one front but we are still faraway from the end
of the conflict.
Iraq and Syria are
fragmented and the biggest challange of the future will be the ethnic and
religious pacification of the region.
Being in difficulty at
home, the IS leads a last ditcheffort else where: from the Islamic world to the
West, both in the case of “lone wolves” converted to extremism or in the case
of jihadist groups ( often grown in the
western metropolis ).
Many people in the West
fear the “clash of civilizations” and in Italy, the writings of Oriana Fallaci
are coming back again.
However, talking about a
“clash of civilizations” is erroneous since it serves the jihadist propaganda:
the more it is spoken about, the more it is encouraged.
The historian Franco Cardini
remembers us that Islam recognizes no clerical authority qualified to speak on
behalf of all Islamic communities, which are actually autocephalous and it
should be borne in mind that most of the Islamic terrorism’s victims are Muslim
themselves.
Massimo Campanini, historian
of the Islamic world, draws attention to the fact that the “civil” infighting,
triggered by extremist and terrorist organizations, is essentially anti-Islamic
precisely because it unleashes a “fake” agreement as civil war between Muslim.
In addiction- as I already
had the opportunity to argue elsewhere- in all this Middle Eastern turmoil, the
geopolitical and bioenergetics issues take precedence over the still-influential
sectarian question.
The Saudi-Iranian rivalry
is essentially geopolitical and unilateral “cultural” explanation
cannot highlight the
complex regional dynamics and the consequent shape of alliances.
What role did the West
play? The Iraqi political-religious fragmentation has deep roots but it has
been revived and encouraged by the 2003 reckless and criminal war.
The Chilcot report has
strongly condemned Blair’s ( and Bush’s) intervention and performance by
highlighting both the wrong assumptions and the predictable consequences.
Things that have been known
for years but that can be finally read in the international press.
The war in Iraq has
certainly been a disaster: it has revived the interreligious and sectarian
clash, it has destroyed a country by
provoking hundreds of thousands of both deaths and refugees and it has laid the
foundations for the rise of the IS.
Nowadays, without war there
wouldn’t be the phantom “Islamic State”: history isn’t made of “ifs” but it is
better to underline the massive responsibilities of those who – if not in the
court – will be “prosecuted” by the historians of the future.
However, we must not fall
into temptation of linking the West with everything that’s going on over there.
The Western powers’ responsibilities are huge but they are not the only
determining factors.
Islamic extremism and the
derived ultraconservative interpretation of the religion come both from the “
Nahda” failure (the so-called Islamic reformism established since the
nineteenth century) and the failure of the pan-Arab nationalism, moreover
opposed by the western powers with all the possible means.
Western powers – USA first
of all- have made use of jihadism for their own strategic ends (think of the
anti-Soviet fight in Afghanistan, the support for the Libyan and Syrian rebels;
or even the Chechen terrorism’s underestimation- when it was not expressly
defended).
There is, however, a
radical component within the Islamic world that is influenced by the Saudi
Wahhbism similar beyond the West, as well as political Islam itself in general.
The IS hasn’t neither been
created by default by some powers (as some people claim) nor it is the Saudis
pawn, who consider it a “lesser evil” and tolerate it as long as it keeps their
enemies busy outside of the kingdom (by preferring other extremist groups-
easier to be controlled- over it).
The war in Iraq and the
support to the jihadist internationalism against Assad’s Syria – who saw western
powers and Gulf monarchies united- are certainly the primary causes of the
Syrian-Iraqi disintegration (a memorandum signed by 51 American diplomats has
even criticized Obama’s policy against Assad because considered too “reactive”!
).
The journalist Fulvio Scaglione
in his recent book of strongly metaphoric title “Deal with the devil” (Bur,
2016) highlights in a very accurate way the relations between western powers
and Saudi Arabia, from which private funds and so-called “charitable”
organizations largely contribute to the financing of the extremist and
terrorist groups.
But business is business
and western powers continue to turn a blind eye.
How can we think of
defeating terrorism if we do not cut the sources of funding and if “we”
Europeans do not review our priorities in Middle East (and not only..) ?
Written by Federico La Mattina
Transalted by Alessandra Falzone
[i] Cfr. F. Cardini, Il califfato e l’Europa. Dalle crociate all’Isis: mille anni di paci e guerre, scambi, alleanze e massacri, Novara, Utet, 2016, p. 237.
[ii] http://www.tpi.it/mondo/africa-e-medio-oriente/massimo-campanini-fondamentalismo-islamico-isis
[iii] Cfr. F. La Mattina, Libia, Siria, Ucraina: una critica del discorso dominante, in “MarxVentuno” 1-2 2016, pp. 137-160.
[iv] http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/17/world/middleeast/syria-assad-obama-airstrikes-diplomats-memo.html?_r=0
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