Islamic State v. al-Qaida
Owen Bennett-Jones
▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/v38/n21/owen-bennett-jones/islamic-state-v-al-qaida
For Paul Rogers, violent jihadism is a symptom first and foremost of global inequality, a revolt from the margins by people who see no evidence that increases in total global wealth are a benefit to them. On the contrary, improvements in education and mass communication only mean that they can appreciate more clearly the extent of their disadvantage and marginalisation. In that sense they are not all that different from the Naxalites in India, the Maoists in Nepal and Peru and the Zapatistas in Mexico.
There are other, on the face of it more surprising, non-religious sources of jihadi violence. The jihadists may have severely disrupted the international system of nation states, but they have had support in doing so from ‘enemy’ governments. The story of the United States and Saudi Arabia helping Osama bin Laden fight the Soviets in Afghanistan is now familiar. Iran supported Zarqawi in Iraq, tolerating his slaughter of Shias because he offered the most effective opposition to the US occupation of Iraq. Syria took the same view, allowing al-Qaida in Iraq’s fighters to slip across the border. One of Hillary Clinton’s leaked emails reveals that as recently as 2014 she believed Qatar and Saudi Arabia were providing ‘clandestine financial and logistic support’ to IS. Turkey also helped both organisations in Syria in the hope that they would oust Assad. Even Assad himself helped them. Calculating that the jihadists would not have the strength to oust him, he released them from jail, bought oil from IS and bombed the Free Syrian Army while leaving IS positions alone. Assad’s idea was to scare either the Americans or the Russians into defending his regime. Putin took the bait.
These policies generally turn sour. A direct line can be drawn from American support for the Afghan Mujahidin to 9/11. Iran’s backing of Zarqawi may have helped Tehran gain influence in the power vacuum left by America’s withdrawal from Iraq, but the Iranians now find themselves having to raise militias to confront IS. Assad and Erdoğan both believed that, having used the violent jihadis to further their purposes in Syria, they could dispose of them when they were no longer needed. Whether that will be as easy as Ankara and Damascus hope remains an open question.
There is another aspect to these machinations. Governments of all types reckon it is better to export violent jihadism than to experience it at home. The Saudis have been the most brazen advocates of this policy but before 9/11 many Middle Eastern governments complained that the UK offered sanctuary to Islamists in the hope that London would not be attacked. And papers captured in Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad hideout revealed that the chief minister of Punjab, Shahbaz Sharif, offered al-Qaida a restoration of good relations with the Pakistan government in return for no attacks in his province.
