The Islamic State (IS) suicide bombings carried out in Yemen and Saudi Arabia last month, in which more than 43 people died, are yet more bitter fruit of the policy pursued by Britain, the US and France and their Gulf allies over the past eight years. This strategy of fostering violently sectarian anti-Shia militias in order to destroy Syria and isolate Iran is part of the West's wider war against the entire global South. The intention is to weaken independent regional powers allied to the BRICs countries (Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa), and especially Russia. The strategy was first revealed in 2007 in US journalist Seymour Hersh's article “The Redirection,” published by The New Yorker. In it, Hersh wrote that Bush administration officials in the US were working with the Saudis to channel billions of dollars to sectarian death squads whose role would be to “throw bombs … at Hezbollah, [Iraqi Shia leader] Moqtada Al-Sadr, Iran and at the Syrians,” in the memorable words of one US official quoted in the article. More evidence of precisely how this strategy has unfolded has been coming out ever since. Most recently, last Monday saw the release of hundreds of pages of formerly classified US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) documents following a two-year court battle in the US. These documents show that, far from being an unpredictable bolt from the blue, as the mainstream media tends to imply, the rise of IS was in fact both predicted and desired by the US and its allies as far back as 2012. The DIA documents, widely circulated among US military and security agencies at the time, note that “there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in Eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran).” Elsewhere, the “supporting powers to the opposition” are defined as “Western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey.” In other words, a Salafist that is, militantly anti-Shia “principality” was “exactly” what the West wanted as part of its war not only against Syria, but also against “Shia expansion” in Iraq as well. Indeed, it was specifically acknowledged that “ISI [the forerunner of IS] could also declare an Islamic state through its union with other terrorist organisations in Iraq and Syria.” The precision of these declassified predictions is astounding. Not only was it predicted that the terrorist groups being supported by Washington and London in Syria would team up with those in Iraq in order to create an “Islamic State,” but the precise dimensions of this state were also spelt out. Recognising that “the Salafists, the Muslim Brotherhood, and AQI [Al-Qaeda in Iraq] are the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria,” the documents noted that the consequences of this for Iraq would be to “create the ideal atmosphere for AQI to return to its old pockets in Mosul and Ramadi.” Mosul, don't forget, was taken by IS in June 2014 and Ramadi fell last month. In the three years since the documents were drawn up, the policy has continued relentlessly. Recent months have seen the West and its regional allies massively stepping up their support for anti-Shia death squads. In late March Saudi Arabia began its bombardment of Yemen following military gains made by the Houthi (Shia) rebels in that country. The Houthis had been the only effective force fighting Al-Qaeda in Yemen, had taken key territories from it last November, and were subsequently threatening it in its remaining strongholds. It was then that the Saudis began their bombardment, with US and British support, and, unsurprisingly, Al-Qaeda has been the key beneficiary of this intervention, gaining breathing space and regaining valuable lost territory, notably retaking the key port of Mukulla within a week of the commencement of the Saudi air strikes. Al-Qaeda has also been making gains in Syria, taking two major cities in Idlib province last month following a ramping-up of military support from Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. And of course Britain has been leading the way for a renewed military intervention in Libya in the guise of a “war against people smuggling” that, as I have argued elsewhere, will inevitably end up boosting the most vicious gangs involved in the trade, namely IS and Al-Qaeda. So what explains this sudden stepping up of Western and “allied” support for Al-Qaeda right now? The answer lies in the increasing disgust at the activities of the death squads across the region. No longer perceived as the valiant freedom fighters they were depicted as in 2011, their role as shock troops for the West's “divide and ruin” strategy, promising nothing but a future of ultra-violent trauma and ethnic cleansing, has become increasingly obvious. The period between mid-2013 and mid-2014 saw a significant turning of the tide against these groups. It began in July 2013 with the ouster of Islamist Egyptian president Mohamed Morsi following fears he was planning to send the Egyptian army to aid the Syrian insurgency. The new Egyptian president, Abdel-Fattah Al-Sisi, put an end not only to that possibility, but also to the flow of fighters from Egypt to Syria. The West hoped to step in the following month with air strikes against the Syrian government, but its attempts to ensure Iranian and Russian acquiescence to such a move came to nothing and it was forced into a humiliating climb-down. Then came the fall of Homs in May 2014, when Syrian government forces retook a key insurgent stronghold. The momentum was clearly with the government side until IS sprang onto the scene, and, with it, a convenient pretext for the US intervention that had been ruled out just a year before. Meanwhile, in Libya the pro-death squad parties decisively lost the elections to the country's first House of Representatives in June 2014. Their refusal to accept defeat led to a new chapter in the post-NATO Libyan disaster, as they set up a new rival government in Tripoli and waged war on the elected parliament. Following a massacre of Egyptians by IS in Libya last December, Egypt sent its air force in on the side of the Tobruk (elected) parliament, and it is now apparently considering sending in ground troops. Losing ground in Yemen, Libya, Egypt and Syria, the West's whole strategy for using armed Salafists as tools of destabilisation was starting to unravel. The direct interventions in Syria, Yemen and Libya, then, are nothing but a means of propping them up, and last Friday's bombings show they are already paying dividends. The writer is a commentator on Middle East affairs based in London.
