You know, the American used, you know, military solution in Afghanistan. And now, after 14 years, they are talking to Taliban, to surrender power to Taliban. And they used to call Taliban as a terrorist organization. "We are not going to talk to them. We have to root them out." They did not root them out. The same thing in Libya. They said, "OK, Gaddafi is a bloody dictator." Yes, he is a bloody dictator. They remove them—they removed him. And what happened? Chaos, anarchy, the vacuum filled by al-Qaeda and filled by the Islamic State and other terrorist militias. So, this is the problem. You know, whenever there is military intervention, whenever there is American intervention in particular, there is failed states. We have more than five failed states in the Middle East. Who will fill the vacuum? The Islamic State. And that’s why they have branches in Egypt, in Sinai, they have branches in Afghanistan, branches in Pakistan, now in a very strong state in Syria. And they have also—could be soon in Palestine, the West Bank and Gaza. So, this is the problem. Military solution, intervention, military intervention, it is not actually the only way.
We have first—you know, Amy, if you’ll allow me, I’ll give you seven keywords, if you want to understand the Middle East and want to understand why this state is very strong and getting stronger and stronger.
First, humiliation. People are humiliated by the military intervention and by their own government, which is, you know, dictatorship.
Frustration. We have more than a hundred young people—a hundred million young people, at least, either full unemployed or partly employed. Those people are frustrated because there is no future.
The third word is marginalization. When the Americans invaded and occupied Iraq, you know, what happened? They marginalized the Sunni sect and gave advantage to the Shia sect, divided the country according to the sectarian life. So this marginalization created the incubator for the Islamic State in Iraq.
Military intervention. And I mentioned, when you intervene by military means in Arab countries, you create failed state.
The lack of—the fifth word is the lack of good governance. We don’t have good governance in the Middle East. Corrupt regimes. Look at the Saudi Arabia. Look at the Gulf region. Look at the other parts of the Arab world. It is corruption everywhere. There is no democracy. There is no human rights. There is no, actually—any transparency.
And then, the other word is underestimation. Underestimation—you know, when the Islamic State was growing in Iraq and Syria, we noticed it, and we said, "This is a very dangerous phenomena." I wrote a book, After Bin Laden: Al Qaeda, the Next Generation. I predicted this. I predicted, you know, more radical organization than al-Qaeda, than Osama bin Laden.
And then, the final word is the social media. You know, people are not listening to the mainstream media anymore as they used to be. And the Islamic State is manipulating this social media, the Internet, the Twitter, the Facebook, you know, the Snapchat, everything.
ABDEL BARI ATWAN: You know, Saudi Arabia is the origin of radicalism, Islamic radicalism, in the Middle East and the whole world and the whole Islamic world. Why? Because al-Qaeda ideology—sorry, Islamic State ideology is the same Wahhabi ideology which adopted by the Saudi kingdom.
So, Saudi Arabia, actually, now, they are—they are, actually, with Qatar and with Turkey. They have some sort of alliance. And they started the problem in Syria. They poured billions in Syria, hoping to topple the Assad regime for personal revenge, not for political means, not for actually, you know, a strategic move from their side. They just want to take revenge, personal revenge, because Assad insulted them in a way or another, and also because they thought that they can topple him in a few weeks, few months maximum. So they poured billions of weapons. And also, they encouraged a hundred—sorry, tens of thousands of volunteers to go through Turkey to Syria to fight against the Assad regime.
Saudi Arabia, until now, they are saying, "We must topple Assad regime." You know, OK, topple Assad regime, you topple the Gaddafi regime, you topple the Ali Abdullah Saleh regime in Yemen. So what happened? Where is the plan B? Have you built—rebuilt Libya, for example? Did you set a good example in Iraq, in Libya, in Yemen, in Syria? What’s the plan after Assad, for example? Who will rule Syria? Is it going to be democracy? Or is it going to be like Libya? Is it going to be like Iraq, divided on the sectarian lines? This is the problem.
ABDEL BARI ATWAN: Yes, Amy, he is absolutely correct. I am personally proud to have American candidate saying the truth. We need the truth. Yes, the American invasion of Iraq created al-Qaeda, or strengthening al-Qaeda and created—or it created the incubator for the Islamic State, because, you know, they—as I said, under the banner of de-Baathification, they thrown millions of Iraqi ex-soldiers, ex-officers on the streets, without any hope, without any dignity, without any pension, nothing at all. And this is the hardcore of the Islamic State. That’s why those people are full of revenge, full of anger, full of blood. So, this is—yes, the American—I agree with Sanders. This is the invasion which created most of the problems.
Boy: “They have guns, they can shoot us because they’re really really mean daddy.”
Father: “It’s OK, they might have guns but we have flowers.”
Boy: “But flowers don’t do anything, they’re for, they’re for…”
Father: “Of course they do, look, everyone is putting flowers down. It’s to fight against the guns.”
Boy: “It’s to protect? And the candles too?”
Father: “It’s to remember the people who have gone.”
Boy: “The flowers and the candles are here to protect us.”
やつら銃をもって、ぼくたちを撃つんだよ。とても悪いやつらだ、父さん
大丈夫さ。 彼らは銃を持っているが、わたしらは花をもっているじゃないか？
花に何もできはしなし。花ってのは・・・・
もちろん花にできるこもあるさ。みんな花を捧げているだろう。銃と戦うためさ。
守ってくれるの？ロウソクも？
亡くなった人たちを思い出すためのものさ。
花とロウソクは僕たちを守ってくれるためにあるんだね。
ISIS seeks to re-kindle civil war between Sunni and Shia; in Paris its strategic goal is to turn European societies against their Muslim minorities — both dynamics from which experience has taught the extremists that they can profit.
Whether we live in Western or Arab capitals, the War on Terror has only escalated the risks to our security. Western news agencies may dutifully parrot official accounts of senior jihadists killed in airstrikes, but they rarely investigate the cost in civilian casualties among those unlucky enough to have the terrorists darken their doorsteps. Yet those casualties, callously branded “collateral damage” in U.S. military parlance, continue to boost recruitment and support for ISIS and likeminded groups.
In Western societies, the impulse to tighten security by putting entire Muslim communities under suspicion and subjecting them to greater surveillance, racial profiling and harassment is often self-defeating, since it alienates the very young people in those communities most vulnerable to radicalization — and whose cooperation is vital in isolating and neutralizing real threats.
ISIS’ myth about rebuilding a Khilafa, or Islamic Caliphate, sounds absurd to many in the West, but it appeals to the desire among many Arabs, both conservatives and liberals, for a sense of unity of the faithful in response to humiliation. Alienated by a lack of opportunity in their own societies, young European Muslims empathize with the suffering of Arabs in Palestine, Syria, Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East — with European governments either indifferent, or actively supporting those inflicting it.
The Arab Spring’s demand for dignity, freedom, and justice has been bathed in blood, with Western powers once again backing the tyrants who bludgeon their own people while insisting they’re the only alternative to terrorism.
It’s not hard to see how ISIS has made a mockery of U.S.-led efforts to counter it. For many Arab states in the “coalition”, fighting ISIS is simply not the top priority. For Turkey, ISIS is a secondary issue in the face of countering the Kurdish separatists of the PKK. Much like Israel, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates view Shia Arabs, Houthis in Yemen and Iran as a more important threat than ISIS. Egypt treats the non-violent Muslim Brotherhood and critics of the regime as more threatening than ISIS. Indeed, key partners in the coalition are more determined to shatter the forces on the front lines in the fight against ISIS.
Even now, despite their differences and difficulties on everything from fiscal policy to accommodating refugees, European powers accept the need to negotiate and compromise with one another based on principles of respect and equality. Now, their challenge is to live up to their common values in the way that they integrate the Muslim minorities on which the continent’s demographic future increasingly depends.
The EU can also serve as a model for the Muslim world, both in terms of its economic integration and its social contract. Countering ISIS requires that those it tries to recruit see an alternative, a new model that grants them dignity, opportunity and participation.
Short-sighted policies, such as backing dictators in the name of authoritarian stability, electing Islamophobic governments in the West, cracking down on European Muslims and dropping bombs on Arab towns simply reinforces the ISIS narrative that the West is at war with all Muslims.
