US Fighting the Third Mideast War?
By Dr Syed Amir
Bethesda, MD
In a little over two years, Barrack Obama’s term as president of the United States will end. Many have remarked that he has noticeably aged during the six years in office. The phenomenon, however, is not unique to him as all recent presidents have shown signs of accelerated aging, reflective of the overwhelming amount of stress they undergo. Mr Obama, uniquely, carries the extra burden of being the first black president.
He came into office with high hopes. The most popular elements of his agenda during his election campaign were the promises to end the American involvement in the twin wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, and to bring the US combat troops home. He kept his promise and, in December 2011, the last US troop left Iraq in the face of stiff opposition from some Republicans opponents who opposed the withdrawal. There are still some 30,000 US combat troops in Afghanistan, but their number is set to go down drastically to 9,800 by the end of the year.
Nonetheless, the unfolding geopolitical events threaten to upend Obama’s carefully laid out agenda for the remaining two years of his presidency, focused on keeping the US out of military entanglements. Since the failure of the so-called Arab Spring, the Muslim-Arab world has been in a state of convulsions, with brutal sectarian wars raging in Iraq and Syria. The uprising against Bashar al Assad in Syria has claimed over 200,000 lives and virtually half the population of the country has sought refuge in the neighboring countries of Turkey, Jordan and Lebanon. A particularly egregious development has been the recent emergence from the ashes of the Syrian and Iraqi civil wars of a malignant new force that variously calls itself Islamic State in Iraq and Syria (ISIS), Islamic Caliphate or just Islamic State, with Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi as the self-proclaimed caliph.
The origin of the militant outfit is obscure, but is believed to comprise mostly disaffected Sunni soldiers and officers of Saddam Hussein’s disbanded army in Iraq and some elements of the Free Syrian Army fighting against Assad’s regime. The French Foreign Minister, Laurent Fabius, declared recently that his Government would not use the term ISIS, for it is an affront to Islam and Muslims who consider the term pejorative. The so-called Islamic State has achieved stunning success, easily crushing weak opposing forces, capturing large swaths of Syrian and Iraqi territory. Mosul, the second largest city in Iraq fell to them without difficulty, while the American-trained Iraqi army melted away, leaving behind their heavy sophisticated weapons.
Even the legendary, but poorly equipped, Kurdish fighters, Peshmerga (meaning, ready to face death), from the northern region of Iraq could not resist their onslaught. Soon, ISIS was knocking at the Kurdish capital of Irbil, which was saved by American air attacks. Besides Syria and Iraq, ISIS has become a potent menace to the governments of surrounding Sunni states--Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Turkey--as it promises to replace their monarchies and constitutions with its own brand of Sharia law.
The ISIS has been denounced by Sunni Arab states, the US and European countries alike, for it aspires to establish a Caliphate based on a narrow, distorted view of Islamic law. They have summarily executed thousands of Shias, Christians and even Sunnis who do not subscribe to their interpretation of Islam. They have destroyed ancient Sufi shrines, Christian churches and other places of worship. The Yazidis, an ancient religious sect in Syria and Iraq that predates Islam, which they regard as apostates, have been the special target of their wrath.
Mr Obama has long been reluctant to intervene. The barbaric beheadings of two American journalists and one British charity worker, and the proud display on the internet of the grisly pictures sickened most viewers. It finally pushed the US Government to deploy air power against ISIS in an attempt to repulse it. Since no ground troops will be used, the success of air power alone is uncertain at best. Also, many Americans worry about the country being dragged into another Middle East quagmire, especially as ISIS poses no direct threat to the homeland, being two oceans and half a world away. The memories of the US involvement in the disastrous Iraqi adventure are too recent to forget.
Whatever may be the ultimate fate of ISIS, its actions have already caused grave damage to the cause of Islam and Muslims, especially in the West. Reports that hundreds of European Muslims and even some American Muslim youths have gone to join ISIS are widespread. There is even a suggestion that the voice of the man with a British accent who is shown on YouTube beheading the American and British civilians belongs to a person of South Asian descent.
It is a mystery why Muslim youths who were born and brought up in the West, apparently living comfortable lives, taking advantage of all the facilities their adopted countries had to offer, become radicalized and so alienated from that society that they are willing to fight against it. In Britain in particular, parents or grandparents of the present generation came there in the fifties and sixties from conservative areas of Pakistan, such as Azad Kashmir, to work as unskilled laborers. Faced with language and cultural barriers, they led mostly insulated lives with little or no interaction with the local communities. They often did not find any need to learn English, but they were all hard working, peaceful people. In many parts of Britain, new generations still live in small ghettos, untouched by the surrounding cultural milieu and social mores. A recent article in the New York Times (September 15, 2014) by Sarfaraz Manzoor portrays a life of drugs and prostitution in the northern English town of Rotherham, in which Pakistani youth have been involved. ( http://www.nytimes.com/2014/09/16/opinion/multiculturalism-and-rape-in-rotherham.html ).
Unlike in Europe, Muslims have done very well in the US. They are among the most highly educated, talented and prosperous segments of the population and also well integrated. While otherwise considered a model minority, we are impacted negatively by the actions and pronouncements of foreign extremist groups, Boko Haram in Nigeria, Taliban in Pakistan, and ISIS in Iraq and Syria, operating in the name of Islam. They deserve only repudiation and no sympathy from American or Europan Muslims.
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