Thursday, May 21, 2015

Many Iraqis Believe Washington Aid Islamic State

The general in charge of U.S. special operations forces in Iraq for the past six months has come out to speak about wide spread believe among Iraqi troops who believe America supports the Islamic State. The top generals fear this potentially leaving U.S. forces vulnerable to reprisal attacks from their nominal allies in the fight against the militants.

Gen. Kurt Crytzer believes this is a communication issue, convinced that Washington’s information campaign in the Middle East is so inadequate that many, “Our adversaries are constantly one step ahead of us in the IO realm,” said Army Brig. Gen. Kurt Crytzer, using the acronym for information operations, while talking to reporters in Florida.  This view is shared among American policy makers; on Tuesday, Army Gen. Joseph Votel, the head of U.S. Special Operations Command was also commenting on the release of multimedia material by US forces.

Foreign policy writes that “the nation that invented the Internet and which is home to Hollywood and Madison Avenue still has trouble competing with the message promulgated by terror groups whose worldview hearkens back to the 7th century but use a sophisticated online and social media strategy to raise money and recruit new fighters.”[1]

The US policy makers commit yet again the fatal error of mixing the remedies they have or can obtain with the solution for the problem and the media as usually carries the dominant narrative. This is not an information or rather misinformation problem, its how the policies of the US, the West and regional allies has impacted the region and its people. The information campaign on the contrary has had a negative impact on the image of the West in the middle in so far as justifying, promoting and reiterating the official line while it has been proven time and again that the western policies are detrimental to the region. As such sources associated with the west has lost their credibility while alternative media such as Aljazeera, RT, Iranian media and IS campaigns have gained audience either as primary or alternative source of information.

The Islamic State could not have emerged without support from western powers and their regional allies. They funded and facilitated the travel of jihadis from 80 countries into Syria and then trained and armed them. In so long as the Jihadists were fighting the Syrian government Western government turned a blind eye on the crimes they were committing against Syrians and all the signs of rising tide of fanatic Jahidism among the Syrian resistance. The idea of overthrowing Assad was primary and an imminent reality after the fate of Gaddafi and no neoconservative and liberal interventionist would have thought it would take this long.  Ecstatic by the prospect the liberals and neocons ignored all the key lessons learned in the last twenty years:

1.    War is unpredictable: this becomes more obvious if one studies the dynamics of conflict in Afghanistan; where the mighty US army failed to sway the tide in its favour against a ragtag band of peasants they labelled Taliban.
2.   People suffer in war: what if this war get uglier and become longer, are you willing to take that risk in order to achieve your strategic objective of ousting Assad from power? This question is left out but there should be a way to get this question into the policy thinking.
3.   States become weaker: as primary caretaker of the community and population a weakened state exposes the population to dangers and decline in living standards but also give rise to violence and tensions in society.
4.   Fanatic Islamism is not your friend: following the pattern established by al-Qaida (allies to Afghan Mujahidin) and the Taliban policy makers should have seen this coming.

We are at a point in history with human tragedy of millions suffering before our eyes can nudge us a bit and the primacy and pursuit of national interest as defined by western leaders is above all. Even if Gen. Kurt Crytzer was right and this was a media war the west has nothing but hypocrisy.


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