Saturday 4 October 2014

#14 Catastrophic Game

You deserve better than tyranny and corruption and torture chambers. You deserve to live as free people. And I assure every citizen of Iraq: ‘your nation will soon be free’....”, stated by George W Bush, the former president of United State during the Iraq war, captured in a documentary titled "Iraq's sectarian war", needless to say that these words are far different from the scenario which resulted henceforth. The U.S. war on Iraq aimed to eliminate weapons of mass destruction and the roots of Al Qaeda, of which former didn't exist at all and the terrorist group spanned the country only after the invasion.The war aimed to make Iraq a model democracy based on law, but US brought them a worst nightmare. The invasion destroyed the social fabric, cultural heritage and economy of Iraq. After the death of Dictator Saddam Hussein, the ambitious plan of US to make Iraq a peaceful country got totally failed. US is accused of creating the men of death, leaving a fertile ground for the rise of Terrorist Organisations and being the root cause of terror in the Middle East. They left Iraq when they were in baleful situation and the vacuum of power so created in Iraq, gave the extremists an opportunity to establish their empire and now the Iraq and Syria are In turmoil due to rise of new terrorist empire called ISIS.

President Barack Obama on 19th Sept 2014 signed a legislation into Law authorizing the U.S. military to arm and train moderate Syrian rebels fighting Islamic State militants in the Middle East. After reading about this decision I felt undulated. Are they committing another mistake? Are they too late to react? Is there no other solution left? So many questions were blowing up my mind.

US overthrew Saddam’s regime and defeated Al Qaeda but it couldn't destroy them. After 2010, the group resurfaced with full force. Extremists successfully freed a number of prisoners and slowly began rebuilding their strength. And today, ISIS holds considerable part of the territory in both Iraq and Syria. ISIS took advantage of the beleaguered & demoralized Iraqi armed forces who lacked motivation to fight against ISIS in captured areas. ISIS was getting considerable support from the people in those border areas who were oppressed by the former dispensation of Nouri Al Maliki. So many foreign fighters left their homes to join the terror group. The impact of ISIS on the society of Iraq and Syria was phenomenal. Documentary titled “The Islamic State by VICE ” depicting violent acts of ISIS, including sexual violence against women is both shocking and disturbing. Their brutality has crossed every limit of Insanity; and the Iraqi and Syrian society are on the brink of extinction. Terrorism experts say they are better organized and are more dangerous than AL-Qaeda.

The withdrawal of US troops from Iraq in 2011 deteriorated the security situation of the beleaguered nation. Their withdrawal didn't strengthen the government of Iraq. The United States has provided billions of dollars’ worth of military equipment to the Iraqi army, which are now under ISIS regime. The United States had already chosen to sacrifice humanitarian interests to secure its own security concerns by providing financial and military support to the Iraqi regime, but they damaged the lives of hundreds of thousands of innocent citizens. The most important event which lead to the rise of ISIS is the civil war in Syria. This is the crucial factor which gave space to ISIS for the establishment of their so called Caliphate. I have expressed my concern over the Syrian civil war in my article titled 'Unrest in Syria Civil War Ongoing'. The unrest in Syria has been ongoing since last 3 years ,but did not came under international attention for a long time, and the neglection includes the period in 2012, when Obama had refused to arm the rebels to fight Assad despite repeated requests from several fronts. And now US has promised to openly arm the moderate Syrian opposition expecting b rebels to use those weapons to fight only ISIS, along with Bashar al-Assad regime.

A Swift Intervention with arms and air strikes might be easy for a great power like US, but achieving the desired political goals is completely a different matter. Interventions & engagements in Vietnam, Afghanistan and Iraq have been long with no concrete results. Another important consideration is that today armed international interventions are likely to be condemned by many of the countries unless they are clearly in self-defense or have been authorized by the UN Security Council.

The events of invasion in the recent history of the world seem to be guided more by the self-interest of the invading country rather than by the stated humanitarian interests. It seems that US tries to get profited by providing weapons to both the warring sides and at same time tries to stay in their good-books; even if it means having devastating effects on the people. Wars do no good for anyone, but are the means of economic expenses while damaging the established structure of the society. It might also be of interest to note that US has taken keen interest in situations of unrest in the countries where it could got benefited by the huge reserves of oil, clearly an economic motivation behind sponsoring the civil wars. It is also worth mentioning that having  control over territory in Iraq would have served the dual purpose of controlling the Iran nuclear program and controlling the business routes passing through Middle East.

U.S. president Obama accepted few months ago and said that “I think Americans have learned that it’s harder to end wars than it is to begin them ”. This statement is very important because it is an acceptance of the big brother of its’ catastrophic acts. It's not acceptable to first create a habitat for fierce terrorist organizations to grow and later to fight against them , that too only when there are some visible interests in the act. The wars can be won with the help of deadly weapons but it’s always the innocent people who suffer. When weapons destroy social fabric and economy of any society, it is inevitable that terrorism will emerge. Iraq is the best example of this situation. The intervening country should help in strengthening the social, economic and political conditions of the invaded country instead of fueling the internal disturbances. The decision of U.S. to arm Syrian rebels, in my view, will prove to be catastrophe for the country and is another deadly game of the USA. All measures the U.S. is taking to suppress the violence are means to destroy the terrorists but not the terrorism.

( An armed mob , driven by an ideology , supported by a belief is more dangerous than a professional Military force)

- Prateek Dixit

(Edited by Rusheel Shukla and Debasis Dash)