Jamil Chughtai
There is no dearth of instances where the inventors and trainers ended up facing embarrassment for none of their faults because either their inventions malfunctioned at the nick of time or the trainees tried to be over-smart when a simple performance was required. But we also find ample examples where the mentors have deliberately let the apprentices go-out-of-control to play havoc with the desired targets and then used the same incident to put on the false garb of a rescuer by ‘disowning the perpetrators’ altogether. Like always, the originator of this clever game has been none else but ‘the Wild and Wily West’ with mastery on this pastime shown by the British, French and American practitioners in their respective timeframes. However, in the present day world of ours, the United States of America has no match in this game of “Disavowal”. In South Asia and the Middle East, Americans have successfully used this policy of ‘first creating and then disclaiming their artwork’ in case of Afghan Mujahideen, Taliban, Al Qaeda, Al Shabaab, ISIS and Daesh. The most interesting part of all this US disavowal drama is that despite outward display of acrimony between the creator and the creation, from within all these outfits continue to show unconditional allegiance to their master-mentor by blindly pursuing the agenda handed down by the proprietor now and then. Although over the past fifty years the US has made politico-strategic interventions in various parts of the world, yet the Muslim regions, especially the Middle East, have been the area of special interest for America since long. For laymen it may be the huge oil reserves that attracted the US in the region, but for those who really know them inside-out it is something far more important than mere petroleum crave. In reality, it is the (im)moral duty of safeguarding the interests, sovereignty and physical security of their foster child, the State of Israel, that surpasses everything. US is under pledge to do this service at any and all costs – even at its own. Hence no sooner than the mind-map of creating and placing Israel among the Arabs was finalized in 1918, US interest in the Middle East took a new aggressive shape. The long term strategy started when the then US President Woodrow Wilson presented his vision for a postwar world inspiring the nationalist movements, principally by German and Arab Jews, that their attempts to realize independence would find support in Washington. For the purpose, initially ‘soft measures’ of influence and persuasion were dwelled upon including the CIA’s secret use of hired (Ivy league) scholars in the Western Asia (later Middle East) for desired opinion making. The carefully disguised links between American academia and Washington’s intelligence community go back decades when the scholars with contemporary knowledge of the Middle East were recruited to run area programs in leading universities like Princeton, Harvard and Columbia to help support US interests in the region. CIA, keeping itself in obscurity, funded the propagation of divisive narratives in Middle East that helped the US foreign policy and security establishment to freely serve Washington’s national security interests in the region.Along with intellectual procedures creating malleable environment in the Middle East, the US raised militant outfits simultaneously to avail excuses, pretext and justifications for moving US forces from one country to another. Hence CIA created and utilized Afghan Mujahideen to stop USSR’s forward march in Asia, then converted them to Talibaan and pitched against Pakistan and Afghanistan at will. Subsequently the same stuff was used to form Al Qaeda providing US the plea to land in Afghanistan in the backdrop of 9/11 merely to bring the entire South Asia and Middle East under watch. Much like Al Qaeda, the Islamic State (ISIS) is made-in-the-USA, to be used as an instrument of terror for both dividing the oil-rich Middle East and countering Iran’s growing influence in the region. In fact, the 2003 American occupation of Iraq was aimed at imposing dominance of one Muslim sect over the other so as to create the pre-conditions for radical Sunni groups, like ISIS, to take root.It is no more a secret that Osama Bin Laden was the creation of CIA that funded his group during the 1980’s. Ex-Foreign Secretary of Britain, Robin Cook has lately admitted that Al Qaeda was produced by Western intelligence agencies based on “the database” of mujahideens who were trained by the CIA during Russian invasion. America continued to maneuver its relationship with Al Qaeda by either funding or targeting the terrorist group keeping in view US interests in a particular region. The Islamic State is its latest weapon that, much like Al Qaeda, has been allowed on purpose to control the Syrian area of the size of the United Kingdom merely to create a fertile breading ground for discontent among all the segments and sects. In the present geo-strategic scenario, ISIS as an instrument of terror is being used by America in three ways: to attack its enemies in the Middle East, to serve as a pretext for US military intervention abroad and to maintain a dangerously oversized US military.As a matter of fact America’s Middle East policy revolves around oil and Israel. The invasion of Iraq has partly satisfied Washington’s craving for oil, but for making Israel feel safer, the neighbouring Muslim states need to be made incapacitated both militarily and monetarily. The two most powerful groups in the US foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs US Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from military’s actions. As per statistics gathered by the Center for Public Integrity recently, more than seventy American companies and individuals have won up to $27 billion in contracts for work in postwar Iraq and Afghanistan over the last couple of years. Nearly 75 per cent of these private companies are linked with the executive flanks of the Republican and Democratic administrations, members of Congress, and the highest echelons in the military.The duplicity of the champion of ‘global war on terror’ stands exposed when few days back President Trump decided to end the CIA’s covert programme to arm and train ‘moderate’ Syrian rebels battling the government of Bashar al-Assad. Abrupt dispensing of the policy clearly indicates that Washington’s broader plans in the Middle East are not limited to the desire of removing Assad from power only. Although the more is yet to come in the Middle East, but the fact that the US has a protracted and blatant record of backing terrorist groups will surprise only those who consistently ignore history.
