Genesis of ISIS terrorism

Since 1991 the West has been involved in wars, big and small, almost continuously. What have been our sources of information on, say, Darfur, or Kunduz, Helmand, Kosovo, Yemen and the running battlefields of Iraq, Libya, Syria or Yemen and scores of other theatres? Oh, we do not care. Then why would anyone need us the High Table? In most instances our sources have been the same - either the US media or, in a roundabout way, Western intelligence.

Let me give you an example where I saw conventional wisdom being forged on information which was patently false. The pulling down of Saddam Hussain’s statue in front of Palestine Hotel in Baghdad has been marketed as the fall of a tyrant which led to a popular upsurge and that this would not have been possible without the US occupation of Iraq in April 2003. Since the CNN amplified this symbolic triumph of “democracy over tyranny,” a clip of the toppled statue has been committed to posterity as a CNN blurb.

What really happened was what I saw. And it was quite different. On April 3, the US troops entered Baghdad. The CNN and the BBC coverage of the troops entering Baghdad was riveting. Obviously, Vice President Dick Cheney, a mastermind of the Iraq operation, also found the TV coverage heady. He, and his cohorts, must have realised that this high pitch excitement could not be sustained forever. An event had to be televised which signalled American victory.

What could be more telegenic than the pulling down of Saddam Hussain’s statue in Baghdad’s Firdous square?
People, it turned out, had not arisen. How could victory then be choreographed without the peoples’ participation? Baathist control over the people in Baghdad was iron clad. That was one reason for people not celebrating Saddam’s fall.

When Baghdad citizens did not come out to help bring down Saddam’s statue, requests went out to the Shia clerics to mobilise crowds. A two-pronged strategy was devised: a US armoured carrier would help pull down the statue with the help of a rope around the statue’s neck. Footage, from a low angle, would make the hotel staff, journalists, hangers on look like a burgeoning crowd.

But that would not amount to jeering mobs? Well, they would have to be driven from the Shia ghetto. Overnight, the ghetto was renamed Sadr city in gratitude to Muqtada Sadr. That is when Shia crowds came onto the streets of Baghdad, beating Saddam Hussain’s photographs with shoes. “Tabarrah” or cursing the enemy is a old Shia tradition.

The clerics are Shias from Sadr city to Najaf and Karbala. The “doomed” regime are the Baathists. Later, senior American columnists even recommended Ayatullah Sistani for the Nobel Peace Prize. Shias were the allies. An alarmed Saudi Arabia saw Iranian influence at their border with Iraq. In Iraq who could blame simmering Sunni anger: From beneath the Baathist skins, the second layer of the “Sunni” broke through.

This Sunni impulse of the erstwhile Baathists, having been in the drill for governance under Saddam Hussain, came in handy for the Americans to teach Shias like Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki a lesson. Maliki had the temerity to deny the Americans the US Status of Forces Agreement in 2011, which would protect Americans in Iraq from local laws.

It was a worrying scenario. A Shia Iraq having a 1,500 km border with Iran, which then was on the brink of a major breakthrough with the US, was a source of great anxiety to two steadfast US allies – Israel and Saudi Arabia. Thomas Friedman of the New York Times asked President Obama in August 2014 why the US Air Force had not attacked the ISIS when it first reared its head.

By his response, Obama gave the game away: “That we did not just start taking a bunch of air strikes all across Iraq as soon as ISIL came in was because we would have taken the pressure off Nouri al Maliki.” The ISIS was an asset then. Nouri al Maliki was shown the door in September 2014 and a US handpicked Prime Minister, Haider al Abadi, was ushered in. By this time ISIS had acquired a life of its own. The cat and mouse that is going on with the ISIS in Fallujah is part of this sequence on which more later.

By Saeed Naqvi