We used to believe it is a crime
to organize, support and give political cover to terrorist organizations.
Things have changed.
“If the (American) Joint Chiefs
are liable to stand trial for crimes against humanity, so is the President –
and of course those who fund, train, and collude with ISIS and its kind,
including Turkey, Qatar, and the Muslim Brotherhood,” James Lewis wrote in the
February 26, 2015 American Thinker.
Lewis added: “… the Obama
administration’s embrace of the Muslim Brotherhood, with its penetration of
essentially all our government agencies, including the Department of Defense,
has had an adverse impact on our policies, particularly with regard to the
Middle East and the global war on terrorism… The Joint Chiefs of Staff know
that what we are doing today in Iraq and Syria to defeat the Islamic State is
wrong. By their acquiescence to the administration’s half-hearted war policies,
they cannot escape being held accountable for the genocide the Islamic State
will inflict on the Syrian inhabitants of Kobani, the Kurds and other
minorities.” (Italics by Lewis).
The terrorist army of the Islamic
State (also called ISIS and ISIL) is made up of foreigners, mainly Muslims. But
a good number of non-Muslims with military experience are also populating its
higher ranks. A British woman was recently shamed to learn that her non-Muslim
brother, an ex-British army officer, had joined IS forces. She isn’t alone.
Many people do not know or have
forgotten (it’s been kept very quiet) that the IS army was created four years
ago by the US to topple the regime of Syrian dictator Bashir Al-Assad.
Few are also aware that Turkey,
Syria’s northern neighbor, is ruled by a Muslim Brotherhood majority
government. As a NATO member, Turkey has long provided recruitment,
intelligence, training and armaments (including a daily flow of ammunition and
spare parts) on behalf of US interests. Iraq, Lebanon and Jordan, which
also border on Syria, did not offer these convenient services to the US.
Qatar, a tiny but wealthy Arab
state with the largest naval American base in the region, was also very willing
to provide generous financing.
Qatar provided another important
“service” – propaganda – in the form of a recruitment campaign to convince
Muslims that fighting in Syria is a “Jihad” against the infidels, meaning all
Syrians. As a result, more than 10 million have fled that country during the
past four years; numerous other citizens are internally displaced.
Egyptian-born Qatari Sheikh
Youssef Qaradawi, spiritual leader of the Muslim Brotherhood, issued the
necessary fatwa and on Qatari TV channel Al-Jazeera, where he not only
publicly blessed the terrorist campaign against Syria, but also urged Muslims
everywhere to join the Islamic State.
IS recruits began flowing in from
as far north as Canada and as far south as Malaysia, passing easily into
Turkey. There, they were greeted like friends by Turkish intelligence, received
training and indoctrination, and were then handed over to Turkish officers in
the field.
So this bizarre behind-the-scenes
American terror campaign against Syria was going very well, with IS receiving
committed and aggressive international recruits. With Qatari financing,
American equipment and Turkish training, it was like a marriage made in heaven.
Although the Syrian army and security forces were exhausted, however, they were
still not defeated.
But then problems arose in this
clever scheme.
IS militants started beheading
Westerners and using the universal reach of social media to ensure that the
whole world could see the grisly killings. And some of the terrorists recruited
to the IS cause did not die as martyrs and go straight to Heaven; instead, they
began returning to their home countries, some with major disillusionment.
At that point the US had to show
the international community that it was against IS, yet it never moved to
prevent Turkey and Qatar from continuing to recruit, train, arm and finance IS
fighters.
On March 6 the Deputy Inspector
General of Malaysia’s police said in the New Straits Times, “with the help of
international enforcement agencies, we had identified more than 60 Malaysians
who had joined IS militants in Syria.” He added that any Malaysians involved
would be arrested and investigated on their return.
The case of IS terrorists going
home to other countries, including Canada, is quite similar. It won’t be back
to life-as-usual for anyone picked up through more vigilant screening at the
borders.
After four years of primary
involvement in organizing, recruiting, training, arming, financing, and
providing the necessary religious and political cover for the IS terror
campaign in Syria, the US continues to play its self-appointed role as a
morally upright champion of justice on the international stage – even while
operating similarly in Libya and Egypt.
But its innocence is wearing
thin. The Obama administration looked downright disingenuous last month when
the White House, after giving terrorism such generous undercover help, hosted a
Feb. 18-19 Summit on Countering Violence and Extremism.
Something is very wrong with this
picture.
March 8, 2015
Dr. Mohamed Elmasry
Dr. Mohamed Elmasry, an
Egyptian-born Canadian, is a Professor of Computer Engineering at the
University of Waterloo.
