Disclaimer #
This documentary series examines the influence of Western foreign intervention on the spread of global terrorist organisations, it is not intended to be an exhaustive exploration of all the factors contributing to the growth of international terrorism.
This is an independent production, it is not sponsored by any organisations: Governmental or non-governmental.
We have aimed to make this documentary as factual and accurate as possible, but it is not and does not claim to be unbiased or neutral, it represents a combination of evidence based research and our subjective personal opinions.
All sources used for the production will be cited throughout the article and in the credits.
Our use of an outlet as a source does not necessarily mean we agree with all of its views or contents.
Intro #
The War on Terror was one of the most defining moments of the 2000s, an event that sadly dampened a lot of the optimism that came with the end of the Cold War in the 1990s, plunging much of the world into sentiments of hatred or paranoia.
But roll on the 2010s and something strange happened, Al-Qaeda, the group that was the target of so many of these sentiments, essentially disappeared from public memory, and their place was taken by a new group called “ISIS”, which dominated the headlines for years.
There was no 9/11 for ISIS, no singular event that fixed everyone on their group, instead it was a combination of large Middle Eastern territorial gains and periodic international attacks that catapulted the group into the public eye, but for over half a decade this group and the wars it was involved in were prime time news, and only when they were rolled back did everyone really get the feeling that this conflict, which lasted over a generation, was finally in some sense “over”.
But how is it that 12 years after the War on Terror began, Al-Qaeda could be forgotten, and the world could allow a terror group like ISIS to flourish, with finances in the billions and their own nation state governing millions, and how was this mistake ultimately undone?
Well, as seems to be the norm with these kinds of topics, the answer is a complex one steeped in a lot of backstory, and the immediate consequences of choices made in the early 2000s, 2003 to be specific, and the factors that led up to them which go back much further.
The Second Link - Iraq #
Terror through Misconduct #
4. Context of the US-Iraq War #
12 years after the end of the USSR, with the US taking a new place as the sole world superpower, and 2 years after the decades-long Western effort to occupy Afghanistan began, U.S. President George Bush decided to open up a new front in his era-defining “War on Terror”. Bush accused Saddam Hussein, the leader of Iraq, of working with Al Qaeda to organise the 9/11 plot, and of maintaining Weapons of Mass Destruction to threaten the West, chemical, biological, nuclear, you name it, he would be willing to use it, Iraq under his rule was a clear cut enemy in the eyes of Bush, someone who flaunted his opposition to the US and needed to pay the price.
In March 2003 Bush made his move with the aid of a new Coalition, Iraq was invaded and Saddam’s government was deposed, the fifth largest army in the world was wiped out in the space of a month and a government that had ruled for over 30 years disintegrated under foreign occupation, causing a wave of instability, conflict and a spread of terrorism that rippled across the wider Middle East.
To see how Saddam came to rule Iraq and earn the ire of the West we have to go back even further than we did for the story of Afghanistan, that was in the late 1970s, this goes all the way back to the late 50s.
4.1 Another Revolution #
Like in Afghanistan this key piece of history begins with the toppling of a monarchy by a republican, in July 1958 the Kingdom of Iraq and its monarch, Faisal the Second, got the boot at the hands of General Abd al-Karim Qasim, who promptly re-organised the country into a Republic. But unlike Afghanistan’s Saur Revolution, which stemmed from a movement dominated by a single ideology, the Iraqi revolutionaries were split between various factions, the most notable 2 being the Communists, who General Qasim aligned himself with, and the Ba’athists, nationalists organising across the Arabian Peninsula who wanted to see it unify into one state.
After Qasim firmly rejected the Ba’athist dream of unification by refusing to join the newly formed United Arab Republic headed by the countries of Egypt and Syria, the Ba’ath Party plotted to assassinate him and take power for themselves, they choose a man they believed would be a capable assassin to head the operation, that man was Saddam Hussein.
But Saddam’s plot, hatched in 1959, was a failure and he was forced to flee Iraq and take refuge in the UAR. Iraq was then plunged into a series of conflicts between Pro and Anti Ba’athist forces throughout the 60s, which came to a close in 1968 when the Ba’ath movement successfully stabilised the country under the rule of Iraqi General Ahmed Hassan Al-Bakr.
After establishing his new regime Al-Bakr appointed Saddam to be his Vice President, they ruled together throughout the 1970s until Al-Bakr ended up in a dispute with Saddam; The UAR had collapsed in 1971 and Hafez Al-Assad, the President of Syria and a fellow Ba’athist, wanted to bring about another Arab unity project, proposing that Syria and Iraq unite as one state with Assad as Vice President and Al-Bakr as President.
Al-Bakr supported the idea, Saddam didn’t, believing he would be sidelined by this new unity government. So in 1979 Saddam took power for himself and became President of Iraq as Al-Bakr, having grown weak and tired from age, resigned. Saddam promptly purged all of his enemies from the Iraqi Ba’ath Party, accusing them of involvement in a Syrian led conspiracy, and set about remaking the country within his new vision, leaving the Syrian and Iraqi Ba’ath movements divided.
But just next door to his newly claimed nation, another country was experiencing its own change in government, the Monarchy of Iran and its Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, were overthrown in a revolt led by Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, with the country embracing of a culture of pious revolution and a declaration of an Islamic Republic; This was mutually seen as a threat by Saddam’s Iraq and the governments of the West, as Saddam feared the revolutionaries could cross the border into Iraq and depose the Ba’athist state and Western governments feared the Gulf Monarchy allies could suffer the same fate, as a result Saddam launched an invasion of Iran with U.S. and Gulf Arab aid.
While Saddam was seen to be serving US interests his blatant record of sponsoring militant groups, just like the militant bankrolling links of other US allies, was covered for and lied about, hushed up and forgotten, his soldiers were given economic aid, military intelligence and training1, even including material for Weapons of Mass Destruction and intelligence on where to use them, all while being presented as acting justly and in self defence.
4.2 The West Turns on Iraq #
The war ended in a stalemate between the 2 sides and they agreed to peace 7 years after it began. Saddam found himself saddled with war debts, owing around 14 billion dollars to the Gulf nation of Kuwait, debts the near bankrupt Iraqi economy could not afford to bear. So when Kuwait refused to forgive the debt, insisted Iraq pay back the money and increased their oil production to drive down global oil prices, depriving Iraq of much needed revenue, relations between the 2 nations quickly soured.
This, coupled with the fact that Kuwait was accused of stealing oil from Iraq, led Saddam to believe that the only way of preventing the Iraqi economy from collapsing was to invade Kuwait and annex it as a province of Iraq, but this proved to be a fatal mistake. Crippling economic sanctions were imposed on Iraq by the UN and when that failed to pressure Saddam to withdraw his ex-allies turned on him and mounted a coalition to drive him back across the border and restore the Kuwaiti monarchy.
In the Western press the Iraqis became monstrous baby killers overnight, terror and WMD programs were something to shout out to the world, to put on every TV channel and in every newspaper, something to make the country an international pariah with, within a month the conflict was over with a firm defeat for the Iraqis.
When the uprising came from the Iraqi people instead Bush chose to allow Saddam to crush it, preferring a buffer state under Saddam to an Iraq that could be more friendly to the Iranians. The only area that was spared was the northern Kurdish region of the country, where coalition military support from an operation called “Provide Comfort” allowed 2 rebel groups, the Kurdistan Democratic Party and Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, to take control and oust Saddam.
In the aftermath the UN sanctions were preserved, even though the original goal of ending the Iraqi occupation of Kuwait had been fulfilled, the idea being to try and coax a coup out of the country or, if that failed, to ensure that this buffer state would be weak enough to not threaten Western allies like Kuwait again, but just strong enough to keep the Iranians at bay.
And this is where the war of 2003 comes in; After trying and failing to nudge Saddam’s elite to launch a coup throughout the 1990s, President George W Bush, H.W. Bush’s son, decided to opt for the direct approach to get rid of the misbehaving dictator his country had been enabling for so long: Invading and occupying Iraq.
In order to encourage support for this idea among the US public he used one of the oldest propaganda tricks in the book, exploiting a tragedy, in this case 9/11.
If Bush could paint the Iraqi government and Al Qaeda as one in the same, major threats, clear aggressors, he could swing public opinion strongly towards supporting a war designed to increase the US’s regional dominance in the Middle East, a new Pax Americana for the 21st century riding off of a wave of anger that stemmed from the still fresh wound of the September 11 attacks, it was a useful narrative and a good opportunity, not an honest one but that was hardly important at the time.
Through repeated false statements made by senior US officials and Bush himself Saddam was falsely linked to the militants of Afghanistan, to seal the deal he was also accused of maintaining the WMDs he had used in the 80s and producing more of them.
Mother Jones’s David Corn has been excellent about chronicling specific examples over the years. Here are just a few:
On numerous occasions, [Vice President] Dick Cheney cited a report that 9/11 conspirator Mohammed Atta had met in Prague with an Iraqi intelligence officer. He said this after the CIA and FBI concluded that this meeting never took place.
More generally on the question of Iraq and al-Qaeda, on September 18, 2001, [National Security Advisor Condoleezza] Rice received a memo summarizing intelligence on the relationship, which concluded there was little evidence of links. Nonetheless Bush continued to claim that Hussein was “a threat because he’s dealing with al-Qaeda” more than a year later.
In August 2002, Dick Cheney declared, “Simply stated, there’s no doubt that Saddam Hussein now has weapons of mass destruction.” But as Corn notes, at that time there was “no confirmed intelligence at this point establishing that Saddam had revived a major WMD operation.” Gen. Anthony Zinni, who had heard the same intelligence and attended Cheney’s speech, would later say in a documentary, “It was a total shock. I couldn’t believe the vice president was saying this, you know? In doing work with the CIA on Iraq WMD, through all the briefings I heard at Langley, I never saw one piece of credible evidence that there was an ongoing program.”
On CNN in September 2002, Condoleezza Rice claimed that aluminum tubes purchased by Iraq were “only really suited for nuclear weapons programs.” This was precisely the opposite of what nuclear experts at the Energy Department were saying; they argue that not only was it very possible the tubes were for nonnuclear purposes but that it was very likely they were too. Even more dire assessments about the tubes from other agencies were exaggerated by administration officials — and in any case, the claim that they’re “only really suited” for nuclear weapons is just false.
In October 2002, Bush said that Saddam Hussein had a “massive stockpile” of biological weapons. But as CIA Director George Tenet noted in early 2004, the CIA had informed policymakers it had “no specific information on the types or quantities of weapons agent or stockpiles at Baghdad’s disposal.” The “massive stockpile” was just literally made up.
In December 2002, Bush declared, “We do not know whether or not [Iraq] has a nuclear weapon.“ That was not what the National Intelligence Estimate said. As Tenet would later testify, “We said that Saddam did not have a nuclear weapon and probably would have been unable to make one until 2007 to 2009.” Bush did know whether or not Iraq had a nuclear weapon — and lied and said he didn’t know to hype the threat.
- No, really, George W. Bush lied about WMDs - by Dylan Matthews (Vox)
In reality the chemical/biological WMDs were destroyed by the 2000s, dismantled as the international community had demanded (in many cases under direct UN supervision), while the nuclear WMDs were simply made up.
And as for the supposed terror link, throughout the 2000s dozens of people had worked hard to find proof of Saddam’s supposed links with Al Qaeda, but the key insiders they talked to denied the claims or outright laughed them off.
Al-Qaeda preached Pan-Islamism2, Saddam preached Pan-Arabism3, Al Qaeda supported religious extremism, Saddam supported religious tolerance, Al-Qaeda destroyed idols, Saddam wanted to be one, they were ideologically incompatible, with totally different views and goals, the only thing they had in common was an enemy in the US, and that was far from enough to unite them.
And it wasn’t just the US intelligence agencies that tried to find a link between Al Qaeda and Iraq’s leadership, the British and Israelis both tried their luck too and came up short, they found no alliance because there wasn’t an alliance to find and everyone knew it before the war started.
In fact, the only Al-Qaeda affiliate that had set foot in Iraq before the invasion was the “Organisation of Monotheism and Jihad”, here we can find it on our Terror Family Tree, it was one of the groups which had emerged in the Afghan Civil War, this group had fled Afghanistan after the US invasion in 2001, and chose a small lawless corner of Iraq as their hiding place.
The group was opposed by Saddam’s government and hunted by his intelligence agencies4, who knew that they weren’t just a terror threat but also a PR problem, as their presence could be of great propaganda value to the coalition.
And the great irony is this real threat was forgotten about and ignored in exchange for the fake one, in the words of Mike Sheuer, the head of the CIA’s team dedicated to hunting Bin Laden and his cronies, Bush had Abu Musab Al-Zarqawi, the leader of the OMJ, “ in his sights for almost every day for a year before the invasion of Iraq” but “ he didn’t shoot because they were wining and dining the French in an effort to get them to assist us in the invasion of Iraq”.
The real terror threat festering in Iraq, which had nothing to do with Saddam, could’ve seemingly been nipped in the bud early without even setting foot there, but of course these facts were too inconvenient, and so they were hidden from the public and replaced with a barrage of misinformation.
Once Bush and his cronies had done their propaganda work, they made their move.
The war began in March 2003, in just over a month the country was overrun, coalition control was established and the Iraqi capital, Baghdad, was captured. After a lengthy manhunt Saddam was captured in December that year.
Numerous searches after the invasion showed that there were no WMDs in the country and after Saddam was caught and interrogated the obvious truth about his supposed terror links quickly came out, Al Qaeda weren’t his allies after all and never had been, much of the world had jumped to supporting a war based on a pack of lies, the supposed Iraqi threat that had been looming over Western shores was nothing more than smoke and mirrors.
5. The Birth of Iraq’s Insurgency #
5.1 To the Victors go the spoils #
As for the aftermath of the invasion, while some Iraqis were keen to celebrate the fall of Saddam’s reign their lives didn’t get any better under the coalition, as with the Afghan occupation the first move the US took was to shoot themselves in the foot.
The original man sent to lead the occupation of Iraq was a General named Jay Garner, whose plan was to bring all of the country’s major groups: Shia Arabs, Sunni Arabs, and the (mostly Sunni) Kurds, together and hold elections as quickly as possible, but once again Donald Rumsfeld intervened, Garner was sacked and replaced by Paul Bremer, who cancelled the elections.
Officially this was because the country wasn’t ready for them, with Bremer’s office arguing that extremist radicals were the best organised groups in the country and would benefit most from the elections, but behind the scenes there was another reason, the Bush administration had been developing a sweeping plan to change Iraq’s laws and sell off its assets through privatisation, Garner had rejected the plan knowing full well that it wasn’t what Iraqis wanted and forcing it on them would inflame the country, trying to argue that the Iraqi people should have the right to decide what happens to their country’s assets, so he lost his job.
Under Bremer the country’s oil wealth was put under dodgy foreign management5 6 7 8, leading to Iraq becoming ranked as one of the most corrupt countries in the world and various decrees were passed to remove protections the Iraqi government had placed on the overall economy 9 10 11 12, essentially handing it over to foreign control and rampant theft, Saddam’s old jails also were re-opened for torture; Just as in Afghanistan when the news of these practices inevitably came out, opposition was emboldened, politicians who spoke out against the occupation were arrested, newspapers shut down.
The result of all this corruption was that many Iraqis became outright hateful towards their “new management”, and they soon found a machine for that hate in the Iraqi Insurgency.
The Iraqi Insurgency showed up as a result of a program spearheaded by the US known as the De-Ba’athification program, a program that was divisive even among coalition members. Under De-Ba’athification members of the Ba’ath Party were banned from holding military or civil service jobs, this disproportionately affected Iraq’s Sunni population as while Saddam’s government had been secular, it was tribalist. Saddam was a Sunni and he liked to recruit from his own families and tribes, so when De-Ba’athification kicked in the Sunnis found themselves much more isolated.
Another key part of De-Ba’athification was that the entire Iraqi security structure: Military, Paramilitary and Intelligence, was disbanded, it was replaced by a patchwork of poorly trained local security forces.
Hundreds of thousands of former troops, still armed, being denied their jobs and pay by their new occupiers, and their slimmed down replacements failing to keep the peace, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out what happened next.
The main problem with De-Ba’athification was that it was modelled on the Denazification policy from the end of World War 2, but it ignored the huge differences between the occupied Germany of 1945 and the occupied Iraq of 2003. Germany’s Military could be disbanded with relative ease because it had already been ground into dust, there was no threat of serious resistance because after over half a decade of war the German people simply had no will left to fight.
Iraq by the time of occupation had only been through a month of war and many of the country’s troops had simply decided to avoid the fighting and go home, they weren’t exhausted or finished at all, they just felt they had nothing to fight for, once the occupation set in, that changed.
We couldn’t do anything against American technology during the war, but now, there’s nothing between me and the U.S. soldiers on the street. Their technology won’t stop me from killing them. So when they felt they were being cheated, all of these masses of people, broke, purposeless and seeing the occupiers as their enemy converted into a well oiled guerilla war machine, a broad tent of fighter groups that believed in everything from Saddam nostalgia to clerical populism.
Along with all these problems, the disbanding of Iraq’s intelligence agencies allowed the OMJ, the militia they had been hunting, to get off the hook and join the growing Iraqi rebel war, and they ended up forming relations with many of the disgruntled ex-military forces that had been sacked by the coalition.
5.2 Welcome “IS” #
A year after the occupation began the OMJ, eager for the support Al Qaeda’s vast array of funds, foreign fighters and military expertise could bring, swore loyalty to Osama Bin Laden and renamed itself to Al Qaeda in Iraq, welcoming the militants of the organisation with open arms as they seized territory and conducted attacks across the country.
So, in a stroke of irony, the coalition had managed to turn the presence of Al Qaeda in Iraq and the links between terror groups and Saddam’s forces from a baseless propaganda theory into a political reality, a factor that caused chaos for the occupation authorities.13
Once again just as in Afghanistan, the U.S. and its partners had created their own terror problem, this time through a pairing of sheer brutality in war with ignorance and incompetence in governance, rather than direct intention. And of course they reacted to this colossal fuck up with trademark seriousness.
PRES. BUSH: …one of the major theaters against Al Qaeda turns out to have been Iraq…
RADDATZ: But not until after the U.S. invaded…
BUSH: Yeah, that, that’s right. So what?
In 2004 the coalition handed power to a new interim Iraqi government but the insurgency continued, with infighting between the Iraqi government (aided by coalition forces) and a mix of Shia rebels mostly backed by Iran and Sunni rebels like Al Qaeda in Iraq, which later renamed itself as the “Islamic State in Iraq”.
Elections were finally held in 2005 but by this point it was too late, the consequences of De-Ba’athification were laid bare, while the election had a turnout rate of 58% this wasn’t 58% across all regions, instead there was an extreme divide, Iraq’s Shia Arab and Kurdish regions had turnout rates that ranged from middle of the road (59-69%) to sky high (71-89%) while the Sunni regions had turnout at rock bottom, with the highest rate in a Sunni province being 34% in the province of Diyala, the worst rate was in the Sunni province of Al-Anbar where just 2% of eligible voters showed up.
Alienating the Sunnis was a major failing as while Iraq’s population is a diverse mix it’s not diverse in the way you would typically think, all groups intermingling in the same place, in Iraq the groups are mostly separate, Shia Arabs in the southeast, Kurds in the far north, Sunni Arabs in the west and centre, losing the Sunnis meant losing a third of the country in geography.
This divide further emerged when the newly elected Iraqi parliament drafted a new constitution for the country and put it to a referendum, the Shia and Kurdish regions had extremely high acceptance rates while all Sunni regions except one, Diyala, rejected it.
While a new election was held following the referendum, which saw notably higher turnout with the Sunnis ending their boycott, the honeymoon was short lived as the results failed to unite the country, Sunni leaders accused the government of election fraud and rejected the results, though the fraud claims were rejected by observers it was clear that the results had failed to unite the country, leaving the country unstable and Sunni regions as a fertile ground for the insurgency.
The failure of the coalition to pacify Iraq and turn it into a prosperous free nation as promised led to dissatisfaction in the West as well, and by 2007 many who had previously supported the war saw it as a mistake, President Bush and the US Congress decided it was time to go, when Bush was replaced by Barack Obama in 2008 Obama followed through on that decision.
But the infighting between the different factions left Iraq as a patchwork of fragmented communities, a broken and weak country, and groups like “IS” weren’t going to disappear, even though the US were pulling out their actions would continue to ripple throughout Iraq.
Just as the US was getting ready to leave in 2010, the “Islamic State in Iraq” group announced its new leader, Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, who had previously been a US-held prisoner in an internment camp known as Camp Bucca, a facility I can only describe as the Linked-In of terrorism, a place where radicals could network.
Abu Ahmed, a former IS affiliate, described the impact of Bucca in an interview with The Guardian titled “Isis: the inside story”, saying:
So, after fuelling Islamic extremism to use it as an asset in the Cold War, then motivating that extremism through the corruption and brutality of the occupation of Afghanistan, the coalition made the same mistake twice by sanctioning, then invading then occupying Iraq and subjecting it to a reign of graft and terror; The coalition had unintentionally given this whole threat breathing space, and in camps like Bucca they had essentially created whole universities of terror with thousands of students enrolled, emerging years later as ready-made militants, Bucca was the new Bagram.
Rather than facing up to these facts they were trying once again to avoid the consequences, in 2011 US troops fully withdrew from Iraq, but just as the Americans thought they were out, they were pulled back in, as 2011 brought another dramatic shift in Middle Eastern politics, the Arab Spring.
The Third Link - Syria #
Terror through Blindness #
6. Context of the Syrian Civil War #
6.1 Exploiting the Spring #
In early 2011, as a result of mass protests, the President of the Arab nation of Tunisia, Zine Ali, was forced to resign.
The successful overthrow of a long running autocratic ruler inspired movements in neighbouring Arab nations to fight against their governments as well: Egypt’s President Hosni Mubarak was ousted, Libya’s so-called “Brother Leader” Muammar Gaddafi was killed in an uprising and Yemen’s President Ali Abdullah Saleh was forced to hand over power to his Vice President, who himself was later overthrown by rebels and forced to flee the country.
Despite all this change, in some Arab nations their leaders were able to hold on to power through a mix of promised reforms and forceful crackdowns, while this approach caused the discontent to wind down in countries like the Gulf Nations of Saudi Arabia, Oman and Bahrain, in Syria’s case the situation escalated into a prolonged civil war.
As law and order began to collapse across much of Syria, rebel groups armed themselves and began to take territory; Of course, a Middle Eastern conflict opening up an opportunity to topple a government that didn’t march in lockstep with Western interests, our friends at the good old CIA couldn’t resist, looks like we need to break out our family tree again.
As with the Afghan Mujahideen and the Iraqi Resistance, the Syrian rebels were divided between various factions of competing allegiances and ideologies, much of the rebel movement fought under the banner of an organisation known as the Free Syrian Army or “FSA”, but the FSA wasn’t an Army in the usual sense, a central organisation that troops on the ground take commands from, it was more of a brand name that militias would associate with. The FSA’s first commander-in-chief, a defecting Syrian Intelligence Officer named Riad Al-Assad, wasn’t even in the country, instead living in a refugee camp in Turkey while offering broad guidelines rather than concrete orders.
The disorganised nature of the FSA made potential donors like the US wary, to the point that Obama initially rejected a CIA plan to aid the rebellion due to fears that the support could end up in the hands of extremist groups, who were steadily becoming the dominant forces among the rebels.
This anxiety pressured rebel leaders from across the country to coordinate, so they got together in December 2012 and formed a body called the “Supreme Military Council”, led by another defector from the government, General Salim Idris, the Council was supposed to call the shots in exchange for funnelling money to the different rebel militias.
With the formation of this council, the CIA began a campaign to support the rebels known as Timber Sycamore, managed with the cooperation of other governments including the UK, Turkey and the Gulf Arab nations of Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar. The campaign organised the buying of arms from Eastern Europe and the sending of them to Syria, while offering training to rebels on their use at the cost of millions of dollars.
The idea was that the SMC would be the distributor of aid, and it would ensure that only “moderate” forces, rather than groups linked to blacklisted militants like Al-Qaeda, received support, the Washington Post described General Idris as “ anointed […] by Secretary of State John F. Kerry as the sole conduit for aid to Syria’s rebels”, this system allowed the U.S. to claim they were only supporting carefully vetted “pro-democracy” groups, with the SMC being a kind of safety valve.
But this simply wasn’t true. While General Idris was, on paper, the commander of the rebel forces, in practice he was just like his predecessor, Colonel Riad, he wasn’t the leader of a centralised group.
To emphasise how disjointed the FSA was, here are some quotes from a BBC article from the time called “Guide to the Syrian Rebels”:
There are believed to be as many as 1,000 armed opposition groups in Syria
Again, this wasn’t a commanding group calling the shots, it was a loose brand name that varying militias chose to associate with, militias that lacked a unifying vision for what a Post-Assad Syria would look like, the only true factor all their ambitions shared was a future without Assad.
We don’t have a definitive list of the rebel groups the CIA sponsored in Syria because Timber Sycamore, like Operation Cyclone, was a covert operation, the reason we know a lot more about Cyclone is because many of the documents related to it have been declassified, since it’s an operation that has been over with for over 3 decades. Sycamore is another matter, it’s recent history, so where we can’t rely on released documents we have to look at news reports and analysts to paint a picture, and that picture is disturbing to say the least.
6.2 Extremist Infiltration #
Alongside the FSA there were other independently aligned militias, most of them linked to extremism, the most infamous of these was Jabhat Al-Nusra, also known as the Al-Nusra Front, an extremist militia and designated terrorist organisation connected to Al-Qaeda.
Despite the claims that the FSA was a moderate force capable of filtering out extremism, FSA aligned fighters were found to be fighting alongside and sharing US issued equipment with Al-Nusra.
The Nusra Front was formed as an extension of Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi’s Al-Qaeda backed group the “Islamic State in Iraq”, which was also operating in Syria and had recieved cooperation from other rebel militants.
In mid 2013 Baghdadi tried to merge Al-Nusra back into his Islamic State group, this caused a split between forces loyal to Al Qaeda who wanted to continue as Al-Nusra, led by its commander Abu Mohammad al-Julani, and those who wanted to see the merge go ahead, following Al-Baghdadi on a path of independence as the “Islamic State in Iraq and Al-Sham”, what we now all know as “ISIS”, or “ISIL”.
This newly expanded group claimed that a high number of US-backed FSA rebels had defected to their cause, while leading factions of the FSA’s Supreme Council formed alliances with Al-Nusra, making the line between the so-called “moderate” rebels and the “extremist” rebels at best blurred and at worst non-existent.
As these groups entrenched themselves inside Syria they began inviting other Al-Qaeda backed militants like the Chinese Turkestan Islamic Movement into the country, turning it into a hotbed of international watchlisted groups much like Iraq and Afghanistan.
In other cases non-ISIS rebel fighters were found to be selling off US provided weapons to local arms dealers in order to pay wages, these arms dealers would then sell the weapons off as part of the global arms trade, leaving them to end up in the hands of ISIS militants as they conducted attacks abroad and went on to expand their proclaimed state, receiving loyalty pledges from militants across the Middle East.
As ISIS grew thanks to the chaos of the Syrian Civil War its forces became more confident, the group launched attacks across the Sunni heartlands of neighbouring Iraq, tapping into intensified Sunni unrest prompted by the Arab Spring, the group captured large portions of territory in both countries.
In 2014 they bulldozed the border between Syria and Iraq and declared an international caliphate known simply as the “Islamic State” or “IS”, effectively merging the two conflicts.
With their proclamation the group demanded pledges of loyalty from all Muslims, placing them at odds with every other faction in these conflicts, and with more or less every other organisation on the planet.
As the influence and notoriety of “IS” grew they became a more daily fixture of the international media, and the question over what to call them became a hotly contested one, some outlets simply used translations the group’s past and present official names, “ISIS”, “ISIL”, “IS”, sometimes putting terms like “self styled” or “so called” before them to try and avoid endorsing the group’s claims to being a credible representation of Islam or Statehood, an endorsement that could embolden not just the group itself, but also far-right radicals seeking to tie the atrocities of the group to Islam as a whole, presenting it as a bloodthirsty barbaric religion despite the fact that the regions the group were pillaging were predominantly Muslim, and many of the soldiers battling it on the frontlines were Muslim too.
To avoid this problem, new names for the group emerged, Egypt’s religious body the Dar Al-Ifta coined the term “QSIS”, replacing the “I” with a “Q” to mean “Al-Qaeda Separatist”, while a more common replacement was a contraction of the Arabic name for ISIS, “Daesh”, a shortened title that could use their name without endorsing the claims of their ideology, similar to how “National Socialist” is shortened to “Nazi” when talking about Germany’s World War 2 Fascist movement.
The actions of Daesh led the former Anti US rebels of the Shia Iraqi insurgency to join hands with the Iraqi government, with its groups forming a front known as the “Popular Mobilisation Forces” and participating in the fight against Daesh, this gave Iran vast influence over Iraq.
Shocked at the ability of a militia like Daesh to take huge swathes of territory across multiple countries, the European Union hired out an arms tracking company known as “Conflict Armament Research” to discover the source of the group’s weaponry, the results were not reassuring.
The report found that the CIA’s Timber Sycamore program had (in their words) “significantly augmented the quantity and quality of weapons available to IS forces—in numbers far beyond those that would have been available to the group through battlefield capture alone”14, in one of the worst cases they found that a US distributed Anti-Tank Weapon had ended up in the hands of Daesh within 2 months of leaving the factory15; Timber Sycamore wasn’t just providing Daesh with small arms (Rifles, Machine Guns and the like), but it was supplying them with modern military grade heavy weapons systems:
Supplies of materiel into the Syrian conflict from foreign parties—notably the United States and Saudi Arabia—have indirectly allowed IS to obtain substantial quantities of anti-armour ammunition. These weapons include ATGWs and several varieties of rocket with tandem warheads, which are designed to defeat modern reactive armour. These systems continue to pose a significant threat to the coalition of troops arrayed against IS forces. https://www.conflictarm.com/reports/weapons-of-the-islamic-state/, Page 6, second bullet point
The Remains of the Moderates #
To turn a bad situation into a catastrophic scenario, the FSA Military Council that the US was banking on ended up being disbanded due to corruption allegations, lasting only a year or 2 after Timber Sycamore’s beginning.
This left the swarm of remaining rebel armies to progressively splinter further and further into new sub-groups claiming its name on the battlefield with no central command structure at all, in the words of one activist quoted in 2015:
In spite of all these blatant warning signs the CIA program carried on for a further 3 years, even as the rebels rapidly lost their territory to Syrian government advances aided by Russia and Iran and infighting between Daeshand other rebel militias.
As a result by the Mid 2010s, just over a decade after 9/11, the US and its coalition partners had unintentionally armed 2 major groups it recognised as terrorist organisations, both linked to the group associated with the twin tower bombings, contributed to the spread of intense militarism in multiple countries and allowed the Anti American Iranians to pocket up vast influence across the Middle East.
7. Mopping up the Mess #
Seeing that their old strategies had created this massive disaster, the coalition had to come up with something new. In order to combat the growing increase in Daesh dominance the US began a twofold approach known as Train and Equip, where allies in both Syria and Iraq would be supported by large arms shipments and training missions, not by the CIA but instead by the US military, the Special Forces in particular.
The ease of finding allies for this program varied wildly depending on which side of the border the trainers were on:
7.1 Train and Equip - Iraq #
In Iraq things were fairly simple, because the goal was to prop up an already established government rather than overthrow it, the training and arms went to the Iraqi military, Special Forces, Police, and so on, these partners were no-brainers, aiding them did mean indirectly aiding Iran, as the Iranian backed PMF were also a major component of the Anti-Daesh coalition, fighting alongside all the other Iraqi security forces, but what mattered was producing results.
Because everyone had a common ally rather than just a common enemy the conflict in Iraq, which had been an example of very poor international cooperation, instead became an example of positive cooperation, despite their viciously competing geopolitical ambitions the Coalition nations, Iranians and Russians all independently pooled their resources into the Iraqi war effort, after coming into contact with the horrors of Daesh rule many Iraqi Sunni Arabs put their grievances against their government aside to take up arms against the terrorists, ensuring that finally the country would be pulling in one direction.
And because the Iraqis were able to build a dependable force loyal to their side that’s actually what happened, results; It took time, but the separate efforts of Train and Equip and other foreign aid missions proved decisive, Iraqi troops equipped with Iranian, Russian and US jets, augmented by allied airpower16 and the ground power of Iranian and Coalition aligned forces, were able to overcome the immense hurdles of urban warfare and launch major offensives, by late 2017 the militants were drawn out of their strongholds and the Iraqi government re-sealed the Iraqi-Syrian border, taking the final Daesh stronghold, the town of Rawa, shortly after.
Daesh did continue as an insurgency, but they lost their capability to seriously challenge the Iraqi state or its international allies and the Iraqis declared victory.
In the aftermath, the forces who had fought for Iraq held together under the umbrella of the Iraqi state, finally bringing some stability after over a decade of fighting.
7.2 Train and Equip - Syria #
On the other side of that border things were much more complicated because despite the disasters surrounding previous aid to the Syrian rebels, the coalition still wanted to rely on them as partners to fight Daesh, leaving a massive gap between them and other parties involved in the conflict like the Iranians and Russians, who were backing the Syrian government, a common ally didn’t exist, and that made fighting the common enemy much harder.
The idea was this, the coalition would open their doors to volunteering rebel groups, which would be sent abroad for training then would return to Syria with money and arms on the promise that they would fight exclusively against Daesh rather than the Syrian government; Arming rebels with masses of weapons, then asking them not to rebel, what could possibly go wrong?
As with Timber Sycamore, we don’t have a conclusive list of the groups that were planned to be included in the Train and Equip program, in documents relating to Train and Equip’s funding the names of the groups receiving support under the program only started appearing in 2020, 5 years after the program began, before then the US Defence Department was apparently asking for, and receiving, hundreds of millions of dollars in military aid, without specifying who that aid was actually going to.17
Because of this lack of disclosure we don’t actually know the names of the rebel groups initially planned to receive support under Train and Equip when it first began.
But what we do know thanks to public disclosures is that out of over 6000 fighters that initially applied to the program, only 200 or so soldiers from a militia known as “Division 30” actually passed through the training process, which took place during 2015, the other applicants either failed the training or dropped out, with many of them leaving because they refused to agree to only fight Daesh. This incredibly low success record was actually celebrated by a spokesman at the time as proof that the program wasn’t “cutting corners”, promising “credibility” and “high quality students”.
So, what results did these “credible”, “quality” students of Division 30 produce? Well, they immediately handed over all their shiny new equipment and money to Al Qaeda the moment they crossed back into Syria, with those who didn’t want to cooperate being kidnapped and forced to capitulate, they were wiped out the moment they showed up and became a piggy bank for Al Qaeda.
Not exactly a promising military force worth millions in investments, and the best part is, this was all foreseen very early on!
It’s probably fair to say that “complicated business” is barely scratching the surface, it was utterly delusional in the first place to expect that a cohort of around 200 troops were somehow going to turn the tide in a war involving over 200 thousand combatants, but training and “carefully vetting” a group only for them to join a blacklisted terror organisation moments after you let them loose is hardly a good look.
After this disaster, the second group to be partnered with under Train and Equip was a militia established from the remains of other rebel groups known as the “New Syrian Army”, also sometimes called the “Revolutionary Commando Army”, this group did marginally better than Division 30, instead of being immediately wiped out they were able to establish a base in Syria in an region known as “Al-Tanf”, a 3 way border area connecting Syria, Iraq and Jordan, they came to control an airbase in the region and some small neighbouring settlements, including a refugee camp known as “Rukban”. But this rebel army only managed to produce 300 soldiers at its peak, and the area they controlled was mostly an empty desert, so this wasn’t exactly the thumping success of the terror war many were looking for.
Finally, 3rd time’s the charm, the coalition finally struck gold, the next group reached out to for a partnership was the Non-FSA affiliated “Syrian Democratic Forces”, a military coalition organised for the self defence of a non aligned sect of Syria called “Rojava”, officially known as the “Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria”, in 2016 the Americans added the SDF to their list of “vetted forces” involved in Train and Equip.
The SDF was a much more stable alliance than the Syrian opposition groups of the past, and was militarily competent, but despite these optimistic signs there was a big snag.
You see, Rojava as a region was formed as an alliance of various different Syrian groups, with one of the most prominent of them being the Kurds. The Kurds are spread across a region known as “Kurdistan”, which covers 4 countries, Kurdistan’s West is in Syria, its South is in Iraq, its East is part of Iran and its North is part of Turkey.
In Turkish Kurdistan a Communist group known as the PKK or “Kurdistan Workers Party” fought for decades against the Turkish state, trying to create an independent Kurdistan, in the 1990s the party moved away from Kurdish nationalism and shifted towards an ideology called “Democratic Confederalism”, calling instead for Kurds to be given autonomy within their 4 home countries, this shift didn’t lead to an end to the conflict between the Turks and the PKK and the PKK’s leader Abdullah Öcalan was captured by the Turks in 1999.
However, his ideas inspired movements to sprout in the rest of Kurdistan, with Confederalist parties forming in West, South and East Kurdistan to carry on the cause, uniting with the PKK under an organisation called the “Kurdistan Communities Union” or “KCK” in the early 2000s.
One of these parties, the Democratic Union Party based in Syria, became a leading party in Rojava during the Syrian Civil War, with its paramilitary forces the YPG and YPJ becoming major components of the Syrian Democratic Forces.
So while both the US and Russia saw the Rojavans as legitimate partners in Syria due to their willingness to focus on Daesh instead of jockeying for power in the wider civil war, they found themselves at odds with Turkey, a major player in Syria and previously a partner of Timber Sycamore.
The Turks saw the Rojavans as terrorists due to their ties with the PKK, and wanted them gone, it’s worth noting that Western countries agreed with Turkey that the PKK are terrorists but they downplayed the ties between the PKK and Rojava, while Turkey labelled them as one in the same; Once again one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter.
In order to remove the Rojavans from areas around their borders, the Turks gathered together their own proxy militias, which became known as the “Turkish backed Free Syrian Army”, these proxies were mostly ex-clients of the CIA, with SETA, a Turkish think tank, reporting that of 28 Turkish backed factions formed before the US cut ties with the FSA, 21 of them had received US support.18
In 2016, just as the US was introducing Rojava into their club of “vetted allies”, the Turks and the SNA launched an operation known as “Euphrates Shield” to push the Rojavans away from the Turkish border in Northern Syria.
So while the SDF was in some ways a success story, taking back masses of territory from Daesh forces and claiming it for Rojava, successfully carving out a territory neither opposed nor loyal to the wider Syrian rebellion or the government, mostly spared from the wider civil war raging on in other parts of the country, they were at the same time fighting against a major NATO ally and the CIA’s old partners. In the East, the SDF was battling the West’s enemies, in the North they were battling what were supposed to be its friends.
“Euphrates Shield” continued until early 2017, with the Turks and the proxies securing large parts of Rojava, but that wasn’t the end of things. In late 2017 the Turkish backed FSA incorporated 13 new militias into its ranks19 and rebranded itself as the so-called “Syrian National Army” or “SNA”. In early 2018 the Turkish military and the SNA launched another incursion into Northern Syria known as “Operation Olive Branch”, further encroaching on Rojava’s North and pushing the SDF away from the Turkish border.
Despite these conflicts between Western backed groups, the US decided to maintain their backing for the SDF, with Daesh cleared out of Iraq their only territory remained in Syria, so the focus moved solely to the SDF force, a mission that finally resulted in success with the Battle of Baghuz in early 2019, where the last Daesh stronghold in Syria (a so-called “tent city” in a town called Baghuz Fawqani) was taken over by SDF forces, spelling an end to the group’s self declared caliphate.
The completion of the Battle of Baghuz in March 2019 meant that the SDF had served their purpose to the coalition, and had become disposable, the Turks took advantage of this fact and pressured the US to withdraw their support for Rojava.
In October 2019 US troops pulled out of border areas still controlled by Rojava, giving Turkey a free hand to invade, that month the Turks and the SNA launched another incursion called “Operation Peace Spring”, the SNA’s commander-in-chief for this mission was none other than Salim Idris, the ex FSA boss who had previously received backing from the Timber Sycamore program; Reporter Mehdi Hasan summed these events up in a short but sweet article for outlet The Intercept, pointing out that politicians in Washington were reacting with horror at the SNA’s actions in Rojava while completely ignoring that the SNA’s paper trail led back to their own pockets, he summed up the situation as:
Facing overwhelming pressure from the new wave of Turkish incursions, the Rojavans turned to the only faction that had the capabilities to help them resist the invaders, the Syrian Government, inviting Syrian Army troops to enter Rojava and guard the border, keeping the Turks out.
That’s right, after all the work put into Timber Sycamore and Train and Equip, the US backed militias had failed to overthrow Assad and instead begun infighting with each other on a massive scale, allowing the Russians and the Syrian Government to fill the vacuum.
With the CIA conceding defeat in Syria, leaving Assad in power and US backed allies like the Iraqi government and SDF agreeing to collaborate with the Syrian government, the nail in the coffin was firmly planted for the dream of Syrian regime change.
End Thoughts #
8. Results #
While the accidental Frankenstein’s monster that was Daesh was contained and eventually destroyed, basically everything else went wrong, Syria and Iraq are still scarred and the situation is very complicated:
In Syria, in spite of all the demands for Bashar Al-Assad to leave power, all the promises that his state was soon to collapse and his ousting was just around the corner, he’s still in office to this day with the majority of Syria back under his government’s control, the consensus from most for a while now, is that he’s already won.
In terms of the leftovers of the opposition, the Al-Nusra Front is still around, having claimed their own split from Al Qaeda and joined together with other extremist factions as a group called Hayat Tahrir Al-Sham20, a prominent militant group that controls half of the remaining rebel territory, now split between their faction under the name of the “Syrian Salvation Government” and the Turkish backed “Syrian National Army” under the name of the “Syrian Interim Government”; The original founder of the FSA, Riad Al-Assad, ended up joining the “Salvation Government” as a minister.
US influence in Syria has essentially been eradicated, Assad is aligned with Iran and Russia, the Interim Government is aligned with Turkey, the Salvation Government is aligned with no one, the only sway the US-led coalition really still can claim in Syria is with the Revolutionary Commando Army (who now call themselves the “Syrian Free Army”), who are still parked on the Syrian border and have no involvement in the wider conflict.
Red = Syrian Government (Assad), Green = Syrian Interim Government (SNA), Light Blue (North) = Syrian Salvation Government (HTS), Yellow = Rojava (SDF), Light Blue (South) = Al-Tanf Deconfliction Zone (Syrian Free Army)
US forces still also have a presence in some portions of SDF territory away from the Turkish border, but these troops are dead weight and the SDF collaborates with Assad and Russia more than the US out of pure necessity, because it’s Assad that’s keeping them from more incursions by the Turks.
Except for a failed attempt by its Kurdish population to secede in 2017 Iraq has been relatively stable since the defeat of Daesh and is beginning to truly recover, which is more than can be said for Syria. But the Iraqi government is still impacted by divided motives, while the Iraqis have cooperated with the US in the past they also have the Anti US PMF in their ranks, and the country is still very much in the orbit of Iran.
Like in Syria there is still a small US presence in Iraq, the bill for all which, if you’re interested, is currently running at around 2 trillion dollars according to the Cost of Wars project. But this occupation is unpopular, and in 2020 Iraqi politicians voted to demand a full US withdrawal.
That’s right, after the coalition spent so long supposedly fighting for “democracy” and “freedom” in Iraq, the elected representatives of the Iraqi people asked them to leave, and what did they say? No. The jokes write themselves.
The Iraqis are not so keen on their Iranian guests remaining either, both Iran and the US were welcome during the terror war, by necessity, but now they’ve outstayed their welcome, with their tit for tat attacks on each other really disrupting Iraq’s family dynamic.
These are ongoing dilemmas, but in spite of them Iraq has solid prospects for recovery, after being put through such a long war they finally have the peace they deserve, for the most part.
And in Afghanistan this peace now exists too, but at a cost, with the refusal of international parties to recognise the Taliban’s new government the country’s prospects for recovery have been dampened, the country is in some ways right back to where it was in 2001, the only difference is the graveyards are a lot more full now.
The senior officials responsible for all of this have never been held to account, instead passing into comfortable retirement, Ronald Reagan is still a venerated figure in many right wing circles despite the utter disaster his “Reagan Doctrine” did to the world, in the more rosy eyed version of his reputation he represents a confident, assertive America that knows how to win, history can judge that reputation and I hope it will judge it harshly.
George Bush is not so popular, being more thought of as a bumbling idiot, but people are still arguing over his choices to this day, his defenders insist that he genuinely believed what he was telling people about the supposed conspiracy between Saddam and Al-Qaeda, and about Iraq’s fictitious WMD programs, his critics often insist he knowingly lied to sell the war.
Well, the fact that he lied is undebatable, the evidence that the claims of him and his cronies were false was out there all along, but there’s a debate to be had on whether he was completely lying, knowing that what he was saying was all false but saying it was true anyway, or partially lying, genuinely believing it but lying about how strong the “evidence” was and ignoring suggestions to the contrary because the narrative he was weaving gave him a pretty little justification to do what he wanted to do. Jury’s still out on that one and we likely won’t get a verdict until the documents related to all this are declassified many decades from now, but I’m not too keen on giving Bush the benefit of the doubt.
Obama’s legacy in Syria is near universally recognised as a disaster but his critics disagree on what his mistake was, while many attack him for getting involved in Syria given the chaos the intervention there fed others assert the opposite view, that his mistake was not getting involved quick enough. The argument goes that if Obama had acted quick enough by aiding the rebels as soon as possible when the war broke out he could’ve ensured that the moderate rebels were at the helm instead of the extremists, and that they were in a strong enough position to topple Assad once and for all.
There’s no way of knowing for sure, since we don’t have a crystal ball, but if you want my verdict I’ll say I find this idea extremely questionable, as I mentioned in the Syria section the rebels were never a united front, a rebel victory in Syria would’ve almost certainly led to the same scenario we saw in 1990s Afghanistan, once the common enemy is gone the rebel factions turn their guns on each other and the war begins anew, in Afghanistan the result of that was that the extremists came out on top, given that they gained a fighting edge in Syria so quickly I’m sure Syria would’ve suffered the same fate.
The only way that could’ve been staved off would be a direction intervention from the coalition to topple Assad, just like in Iraq and Afghanistan before, the invasion part would’ve been easy, it took very little time at all to smash the armies of Saddam and Mullah Omar, the problem is the statebuilding you have to do after, could that have been handled better than in Iraq and Afghanistan? Given the coalition’s apparent chronic inability to learn lessons, most likely not.
That leaves Trump and Biden, Trump received a huge amount of condemnation for dumping the SDF after they outlived their usefulness, selling them out to Turkey, but he likely cares very little about the consequences, his betrayal ultimately handed power to Assad and the Russians but he wrote off the Syrian conflict as a lost cause before he made that decision, his focus was defeating Daesh and given that this happened under his watch he’ll try to take the credit, whether his people give it to him is another thing.
Then there’s Afghanistan, he was the one who finally decided to end the forever war in that country by doing a deal with the Taliban, but he’s largely managed to escape blame since he left the final execution of the withdrawal to Biden, Biden of course deserves a share of that blame for promising there would be no Vietnam style evacuation as that exact thing then happened, it ensured that the start of his presidency was a picturesque humiliation of American power, he’s spent the second half of it trying to undo that failing in Ukraine, time will tell if he succeeds.
And the same debates over legacy are of course playing out in other coalition aligned countries, where people have asked just how the hell we went along with all of this and what we could’ve done instead, Britain’s Tony Blair is particularly infamous for bringing the UK into the Iraq War and supporting the fraudulent narratives peddled by the US to promote it, his image now is commonly that of a lap dog kneeling at Bush’s feet and his explanation that he went along with the war to ensure that he would be the first person to be called when Bush picked up the phone didn’t exactly help push that image aside. Iraq is the number one thing that comes to mind when his name comes up, it stains his legacy and most likely always will, but he’s still unapologetic and the whole saga hasn’t stopped him from getting a knighthood, despite overwhelming public disapproval and a 1 million strong petition arguing he’s the last person to deserve that kind of honour.
On top of all this, justice for the 9/11 victims still has not been found as the trials related to the attacks have dragged on for over 2 decades, gone through several different judges, bounced between civilian and military courts and failed to produce any convictions, partially because of the unreliability of testimonies from detainees, thanks to the extensive use of torture in camps like Guantanamo Bay to obtain them. There was a brief glimmer of hope when in early August 2024 a plea deal was reached between US prosecutors and 3 of the prisoners, but that was dashed only 3 days after its announcement when the US Defence Secretary tore up the deal.
Some of these detainees had real connections to the attacks but have had the cases against them tainted by this process, others are people who had no involvement and have simply been forgotten about. Abu Zubaydah is one of them, he was detained in 2002 based on claims that he was a top member of Al-Qaeda and an organiser of the 9/11 attacks, as well as earlier Al-Qaeda plots, after torturing him repeatedly the U.S. government dropped their claims of his involvement, but he was kept in Guantanamo Bay anyway without ever being charged with a crime, the law allowing the US government to do this, the “AUMF”, is still on the books to this day.
Looking back at the history of these conflicts, from the late 1970s to now, from Afghanistan to Iraq and then to Syria, it’s safe to say that these attempts to build and extend power blocs have ended in disaster, with their consequences still being felt today. The entire “War on Terror” was the US and its partners making messes then trying to clean them up; As we can see the results, to put it generously, leave something to be desired.
We can see a clear link between US decision making and the growth of extremism and instability; A chain running through the 3 main countries covered, all leading up to this point. The US-led destruction of the Afghan security apparatus gave Al Qaeda a home, the US led destruction of the Iraqi security apparatus then gave them room to expand as the “Islamic State in Iraq”, finally the US led attempted destruction of the Syrian security apparatus led to the expansion of the “Islamic State” as Jabhat Al-Nusra and later the gaining of territory by its splinter group, Daesh. Shambolic policies like De-Ba’athification, “enhanced interrogation” and financial corruption further fanned the flames, with these events all resulting in numerous terrorist attacks around the globe.
And besides these war ravaged regions, the impact is being felt elsewhere too, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria are only the big 3 of the chain, the ones that were in the headlines the most, but lots more countries have faced insurgencies by offshoots of groups like Daesh and Al-Qaeda: Libya, Yemen, the Philippines, Nigeria and Somalia, just to name a few.
If we look at our family tree in totality we can see that all of these groups have a common lineage that starts with Afghanistan. All of this because the US and its partners wanted to get rid of the USSR and expand their influence in the aftermath; Building an Empire comes with a high price tag, both human and financial, that total tag is something we will likely never be able to truly quantify, but there are some estimates we can look at.
Here’s are some key stats from the total figures page of the Cost of War project:
- Around 8 trillion spent
- Almost 1 million dead
- 38 million refugees
- 85 countries dragged into conflict, that’s over a quarter of all the world’s countries put together
And this isn’t even a full estimate, the budget summary on the site clarifies that it doesn’t count the money spent by other coalition members like the UK, Canada, Australia or Germany21, and the infographic that comes with it only shows US war costs22, so we can probably add on several billion extra at a minimum from other coalition members.
And the 38 million displaced? That’s just the statistics for 8 countries, there’s 77 more countries where we’re not counting, and on the page dedicated to the statistics, we can see that 38 million is the lowball figure, with higher possible numbers being 50 or even 60 million people.23
And think about how these displacements have impacted the wider world, especially in Europe where thousands of Libyans, Syrians and Afghanis have sought refuge, political parties have come to power over the years especially by piggybacking off of this issue.
And if the examples mentioned so far weren’t proof enough, how about Ukraine?
The CIA operation in Afghanistan wasn’t the only reason the Soviet Union collapsed, but it was a big one, the Western Allies of the Cold War worked so hard to destroy the USSR and what did we get in its place? A resurgent, militarist Russia eager to recover lost ground, another mess, many many conflicts happened across the world as a result of the Soviet Union collapsing the way it did.
Yet another mess, yet another cleanup attempt.
So now you can hopefully see, terrorism might be out of the headlines nowadays, with the loss of Afghanistan suddenly kicking the topic under the rug, but these events are impacting the world to this day.
8.1 Enemy of My Enemy #
This is the problem with Cold War politics, some people miss the days of the Cold War, when there was a clear enemy and you knew where the danger was coming from, who to point your guns at, but having a clear enemy in the Soviet Union meant doing everything to defeat it, making compromises that shouldn’t have been made, backing people and groups that shouldn’t have been backed and expanding a great big powder keg in the poorly placed hope that the bad guys would get covered in soot while everyone else stayed out of the blast range, it was all supposed to be worth it, to be justified, in the name of defeating the big bad, and there was a certainty that came with that idea.
That false sense of certainty resulted in consequences we are still feeling today, as the West’s pet project insurgencies ended up seeing their old benefactors as just the next foe in a long line that only scratched the surface with the USSR, a grand plan to destroy the Communist boogeyman ended up creating an even more terrifying one that was much more ruthless and overt in waging war.
The most painful lesson of the Cold War is that the enemy of your enemy isn’t always your friend, in the name of stopping the big brother of Communism, the Soviet Union, the governments of the Western Bloc supported despots, thieves and tyrants, the so-called “free world” ensured millions were deprived of freedom by bankrolling and arming their oppressors and many across the world are still paying the price for it to this day. This kind of politics just doesn’t work, it didn’t in the 1980s and it doesn’t in the 2000s.
Terrorism is like a seed, these were home grown movements, but the arms and money of the US and other governments in its alignment were like the light and the water; without the action of these governments many of the most prominent extremist groups would have never risen up to claim the power they did, piles of money and guns have ended up in their hands and indiscriminate drone strikes killing innocents in their masses turned out to be the ideal recruitment drive.
After billions of dollars spent, arms shipped in, movements coaxed and a bloodlust indulged the US and the wider world isn’t any more powerful or secure than it was before the “War on Terror”, if anything, it seems much less so.
But let’s not kid ourselves, this doesn’t all just come down to mistakes and bad decision making, there’s something more to it, something we were warned about a very long time ago, after one of the biggest wars in recent memory…
8.2 The Military Industrial Complex #
You see, these aren’t really win or lose wars at all, because as much as we hear preaching about the necessities of “national security”, a Communist ruled Afghanistan, Saddam ruled Iraq or Assad ruled Syria were never going to spell the end of the U.S. as a country, these were never nations that had the capacity or much interest at all in doing harm to the US mainland, even the last power that seriously committed itself to doing so, the Japanese Empire, turned out to be punching well above its weight, leaving the US one of the few participants of World War 2 to come out with its cities unscathed, its population untouched by enemy fire.
So if it’s not about safety or security and ultimately it’s not even a win or lose war, what is it really about? The answer is, follow the money. Would the US prefer that they had held countries like Afghanistan or Iraq in the long term, increasing their strength by pocketing up aligned countries? Of course.
But a failure to do so doesn’t mean the conflicts will stop, quite the opposite even, as the main beneficiaries of these wars are the figures behind the war economy, defence contractors, the people who make the guns, the planes, the bombs, and they benefit from long, drawn out wars, the yearly US military budget is around 700 billion dollars and companies supplying them are in a great position to make a profit, to take just one example, the military tech company Lockheed Martin got 36 billion dollars in government contracts in 2008, by 2021 that number had ballooned to 72 billion.
If there are no more wars, there’s no more use for this industry, so there will always be a voice for greater confrontation, war and murky involvement in the affairs of others, and when some of the decision makers who decide how much money the industry gets, or whether to support war, are the ones with stocks in the war industry in the first place, that voice will often be the loudest, a tumour hanging off the end of the representative system, traditionally we would call this lobbying, I would call it corruption.
And that’s how wars like Afghanistan can go on well over a decade after they become unpopular, and it’s how very shortly after promising to end US involvement in the so-called “forever wars”, Joe Biden deeply involved his country in the war effort in Ukraine, when that involvement was questioned he didn’t just argue for it in terms of the typical political tropes about backing up democracy, but in economic terms, talking about how good it would be for jobs.
Most people aren’t in this war industry, but it’s an industry that has a disproportionate voice at the table, this is a danger Eisenhower saw coming just as the Cold War was starting to kick off, and as we enter into the next one we can certainly see that his warnings fell on deaf ears.
8.3 What should be done? #
So, why, ultimately, does all this really matter?
Well, all of this essentially builds up to a recurring theme of the last few episodes of MEGA, it’s pretty much a matter of fact that a new Cold War has begun, and this is why we’ve been looking over Cold War events and their aftermaths and relating them to the modern day, covering the events, the lies, the media attitudes, the would-be celebrities trying to sell us what we want to hear, a kind of black and white hero narrative.
But that’s the thing, we’re not heroes and these things aren’t black and white, and we shouldn’t succumb to saviour syndrome; We in the Western Bloc, “won” the first Cold War in a way, in the contest for power between the war’s two blocs there’s no question who came out on top, the Soviet Union and almost all of its allied states are gone while the US and its allies are still standing, that’s a clear win over the Eastern Bloc.
But the Cold War wasn’t just a battle for power, it was a battle of ideas, two titanic civilisations trying to prove their values were superior, and this is where things get a lot more murky. We didn’t win the Cold War by proving our values were right, or by our acts of humanitarianism, we won by lying, cheating and stealing, we outspent the Soviets in the arms race, we outpaced them in election meddling and when that wasn’t enough we sponsored wars and coup attempts, we handed immense amounts of power to an industry that profits off of murder and we propped up brutal movements who were willing to be soldiers in our proxy wars, that’s how we won.
Some of these movements even included the little brothers of Communism like the Chinese24, the fact that they stood for everything the West was against was irrelevant as long as they were Anti-Soviet, just as it was with the Mujahideen and their hardcore religious puritanism; Any semblance of values gave way to a simple power struggle, for land, lives, money and influence.
It was a struggle the West won, but this “victory” made a mockery of democratic values, we poisoned ourselves for power with utopian preaching and dystopian practice.
And what did we get out of it? In the 3 decades of “victory” where the US was the world’s only superpower, we’ve been stuck in foreign wars, the hot wars we created to win the cold one and consolidate power, we’ve been stuck in a 3 decade epilogue and we’ve been making the same mistakes, preaching democracy while allying with dictators, making values like freedom and human rights that should be the bedrock of our societies seem like worthless slogans used to score cheap points.
In the end it’s worth remembering, war shouldn’t be a game, or a match of chess, it’s brutal, harsh and cruel and puts the lives of real human beings at stake, no matter how much we try to dissociate ourselves from it, to pretend it’s just something in a faraway land not affecting us. So we have to come up with better ways to resolve our problems than bombing each other into the ground, directly or indirectly, I’m not a policy maker or some kind of world leader, just a researcher and a person with an opinion, so I can’t tell you what those ways will be, but I do have some suggestions:
- Separate security policy from foreign policy:
By foreign policy I mean empire building, getting involved in proxy wars and trying to “contain” perceived rivals that don’t play ball, by security policy I mean disrupting threats to our nations, protecting our territories and our people, because these 2 things aren’t one in the same, we all have a right to self defence, we don’t have a right to dominate others.
You see, after 4 decades of the Cold War, a decade handling the chaotic aftermath and 2 decades fighting the War on Terror, the line between “national interests” and “national security” has become blurred in the eyes of military and intelligence leaders.
When you blur a line like this you get wars like Iraq, where an attempt to gain a regional proxy was presented as some sort of war for safety, for self defence, even though a leader like Saddam Hussein had no serious capacity to threaten the safety of the US or other coalition nations in the first place.
The result of this was that the invasion gave breathing room to Daesh, actually creating a threat to the safety of the US and other Western nations, when you confuse security for foreign adventurism, you threaten security.
- Know your “friends”:
If you do get involved in the internal wars of other countries, have the decency to do your homework, know the structures, the alliances, the ideologies, the people, before picking a side and sending them millions of dollars worth of weapons.
If we’d taken a serious interest in the mindsets of the militias of Afghanistan and Syria we were aiding, we could’ve seen that Western interests and their interests didn’t overlap beyond having a mutual enemy, we would’ve been able to predict how backing them would turn out once that mutual enemy wasn’t a factor and the disasters that would result.
In Syria, failing to take this into account could arguably be considered one of the biggest factors for the success of Daesh, governments from countries like the USA and UK hoped to create a Westernised model for Syria, aligned with Western interests, and combat the international problem of extremism posed by groups like Daesh, the Assad government was just one piece of the puzzle.
But for most of the rebels, even among those who supported the idea of a Western-style system of secularism and elected representatives, Assad was the puzzle, and other factors like the post-war model for Syria, the country’s international alignment, and the risks posed by groups like Daesh, were all lower down on the priority list.
The failure to recognise these differences led to wasted lives, time and money in the attempts to convince the rebels to focus on Daesh rather than Assad throughout the Syrian Train and Equip mission, the alliance between the coalition and the rebels was only based on a common enemy, when the coalition shifted the focus to another enemy that alliance was doomed to fail.
Afghanistan was much the same issue, the early focus had been on the international threat of Al-Qaeda, who everyone involved in the intervention could get behind fighting, when the focus shifted to the battle against Taliban the credibility of the effort slowly fell apart, because the Taliban wasn’t the international organisation or international threat that Al-Qaeda was, and large segments of the Afghan forces nominally loyal to the government didn’t seriously care about fighting them due to their divided agendas, descended from the warlord divisions of the 1990s.
And of course this doesn’t just apply to the local groups inside Afghanistan and Syria, but the international “partners” Western nations joined with as well, take Saudi Arabia for example, a major partner for both Operation Cyclone and Timber Sycamore, Saudi Arabia was (and still is) an authoritarian monarchy, not a democracy, run by the exact kind of government the Arab Spring stood against, and yet they were seen as a valid partner for democratic statebuilding through the rebel groups, the obvious result of this was that many of the rebels that were supposed to be “democratic” turned out to actually be extremist, because the extremists were often the ones the Saudis and other “partners” were picking out for aid.
The war effort in Iraq was the one major success story of the “terror war” even in spite of all the mistakes made that led to the war in the first place, and it’s because there was both a common enemy and a common ally, without shifting goal posts: The ally was the Iraqi government and its associates, the enemy was the Daesh network, and this enemy was a credible international threat, if you asked anyone during this war if it was worth it to fight this network they could recall all the attacks and atrocities committed in their name, the answer was an easy yes, the same couldn’t be said for the Taliban or the Syrian government, because their ambitions were domestic rather than foreign.
The result is clear for all to see, Afghanistan was an outright defeat, Syria is a frozen conflict, Iraq was a victory.
- Don’t forget the victims:
Once a conflict is over, however that ending comes about, don’t just drop the country and forget about it, pay attention to the aftermath and how the politics develops.
A major factor in the growth of networks like Al-Qaeda was simple ignorance, despite the fact that the war in Afghanistan continued for years after Western involvement ended in the 1990s, the country was essentially dumped and confined it to the back pages of the headlines back in the 1990s, the view was more or less that the people of Europe mattered and the people of Afghanistan didn’t, that Cold War victory lap mattered more than Afghanistan’s deteriorating state, but what appears to be meaningless one day can make all the difference the next and Afghanistan - the “forgotten country” - ended up being the spark for another 2 decade long war.
Had agencies like the CIA taken a serious interest in the results of their handiwork after the job was done, the brewing toxic cocktail that was Al Qaeda could’ve been seen for the threat it was ahead of time.
And similarly in Iraq, if after we intervened we’d provided its people with jobs and opportunities instead of looting their resources and sacking thousands of soldiers and sending them off into the desert with their guns, fuming with resentment, we could’ve prevented Al Qaeda’s expansion into Iraq, which piggybacked off of the wider chaos in the country, instead we went on a victory lap, proclaiming “mission accomplished”. These weren’t things that could only have been found with the benefit of hindsight, they only went unnoticed because we dropped the ball.
- Military accountability.
If peace comes with too high a cost or simply isn’t possible, hold the people who carry out these wars to account for their actions.
The war in Afghanistan wasn’t lost because the coalition couldn’t keep fighting, throughout the whole conflict the USA lost around 2 and a half thousand troops, the UK lost around 450, Canada around 150, the rest of the coalition partners lost less than 100 soldiers each, for comparison in World War 2, the USA lost roughly 400 thousand troops25, the UK lost around 250 thousand, Canada 37 thousand and so on26. So we could’ve stayed in Afghanistan, propping up its corrupt government and delaying the inevitable, at the existing casualty rates we could’ve done it for over 100 years before reaching WW2 style figures, but do you know why we didn’t? Politics.
It was because the people of the coalition countries didn’t want to anymore, they didn’t want their fathers and sons to pour their blood into this conflict, they didn’t want their tax money to go towards the bullets and bombs, and with these conflicts being so unpopular for so long, there was a lot to gain from dropping them, and the industry had to find a new cause instead.
A large part of that loss of faith in the War on Terror comes down to the misconduct committed during the conflict by the coalition and its partners, not only did these events give people food for thought on whether the war was a just cause, they also acted as perfect promotional material for groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban, because if an empire of militant groups is trying to recruit people by pointing at you as the evil boogeyman, calling you an sinister occupier that tortures their people, it’s a lot easier for that message to sink in if they have case studies to point to.
The only way to stop this is accountability, setting an example by investigating allegations and prosecuting crimes, because refusing to do so only drags down the reputation of soldiers in the eyes of the people they’re supposed to help, when you don’t punish the guilty they will be mixed in with the innocent, and when war is as just as much about hearts and minds as it is battle tactics, that can be fatal.
The sad truth is that in war, atrocities happen, and unless you have a serious disciplinary process based on integrity, that can do irreparable damage. No sweeping crimes under the rug, no willful ignorance, accountability, every time.
I’ve heard the argument in the past that we shouldn’t prosecute crimes at war, because it could “damage the morale of the troops”. Well, do you know what damages morale more? Losing wars.
If we use pointers like these as a start, we’ll be less likely to create such huge blowback in the future; If we ignore them, well, who knows, we might have a 9/11 on our hands, or maybe something even bigger.
So the lesson to learn here isn’t that intervention is always wrong, or that when we see the next crisis unfolding before our eyes we should just sit back and do nothing, in fact there are many examples of positive interventions which lead to genuine humanitarian benefits: For example the UK led intervention in the country of Sierra Leone in the early 2000s, which prevented its collapse into warlordism and crime, but when we see interventions of the malicious kind, designed to aid the interests of a power bloc in the heat of the moment rather than the long term interests of the people at large, we see disasters that affect the lives of millions as the result, and they often undo the good will and benefits humanitarian missions create.
The lesson to learn is when contemplating intervention we should think very carefully about if we really understand the scenario we might be entering, because kicking a hornet’s nest is bad enough, knowing nothing about the hornets is worse, pretending to know about them when you don’t is the worst. That, and that we can’t hand off the responsibility for interventions to those with ulterior motives, because if your problem solver has an ulterior motive, odds are all they have to offer is more problems.
We already have an example of this, remember the East Turkestan Islamic Movement? Well, in 2020 the U.S. government delisted the group from its terror watchlist on the excuse that it apparently hadn’t existed “ for a decade”, in spite of their blatantly visible activities in Syria and Afghanistan, while around the same period US officials began to massively ramp up their rhetoric about the region they stem from, Xinjiang, was this a case of some US politicians began considering using them as a Cyclone-style tool to pressure China with as part of the ongoing US-China rivalry? Although there’s no smoking gun, it seems like things were headed in that direction.
Things turned around however when the Trump Presidency gave way to the Biden Presidency and focus shifted to rivalry with Russia, intensified by the opening volleys of the Second Cold War, happening right in front of our eyes in Ukraine. The plan to drain Russia through Ukraine very much seems to resemble the efforts to drain the Soviet Union through Afghanistan, and if we use these people for all they’re worth and then drop them just as we did the Afghans we will invite a storm down on our heads just like the last time.
Some countries are already concerned about the potential for this, with Germany banning far-right citizens from going to Ukraine due to the risks of them linking up with far-right paramilitaries there and returning with extremist connections. And Max Rose, a US politician and veteran of the War on Terror has even gone as far as comparing the international far right movement drawing influence from the Ukraine conflict to Al Qaeda and their origination in Afghanistan, conflicts like these can be a petri dish for vigilante or paramilitary groups, and especially when that gets mixed with extralegal political organising, this is where Terror Wars can begin.
Of course, there isn’t a perfect parallel between a conflict like Afghanistan and Ukraine, while there are very few “just wars” in the world, the Ukraine War is much closer to being one than the Terror War was, in Afghanistan the extremist warlords were the majority, in Ukraine they’re a minority, and unlike Gorbachev’s Soviet Union of the 1980s, which was diplomatic and more willing to respect the autonomy of its neighbours, Putin’s Russia of today is bitter and malicious, trying to rebuild a lost empire by any means necessary.
But the point is the potential for blowback is still real if the less rosy elements of the Ukrainian forces are ignored; The Second Cold War might be different to the First, but it does carry similar risks; If we don’t learn from the consequences of Operations like Cyclone and Timber Sycamore, regions like these could potentially become part of the next terror chain, with disasterous consequences for the wider world, and that’s why blissful ignorance is not an option, it won’t be so blissful when our cities start burning.
Put simply, look before you leap, and if you do leap, try and make sure you have a soft landing.
There was a shocking number of opportunities to turn back and salvage things in these past conflicts: If we had stopped aiding the Afghanistan Mujahideen before their final victory in Kabul, pushing for a peaceful settlement instead, if we had handled the Afghan and Iraqi occupations more humanely, giving the people of those countries dignity and a reason to work together with us, or if we had simply never fucking meddled ok these countries in the first place, but there were all turned down because of corruption, malice or arrogance.
We don’t know what the world would look like if these catastrophic decisions had never been made:
Enabling terrorists in Afghanistan and Syria, enabling Saddam for a decade before abruptly u-turning years later, causing a humanitarian disaster through vicious economic sanctions, pillaging occupied countries, committing brutal war crimes…
But odds are the world would have been better, safer and more peaceful. There would no doubt have still been plenty of complex, difficult problems to tackle, but solving them or at least managing could’ve been much less costly.
With a new War over the World underway we need to think about the light at the end of the tunnel, what the next epilogue will look like, because “winning” a conflict like this isn’t just about being in the biggest or the most powerful power bloc, there’s no meaningful difference between a Russia-led world or a US-led world if both sides resort to power plays like criminal wars and “enemy of my enemy” tactics to come out on top, we need to look for something better than that or this future will be bleak.
The recent Western blend for geopolitics has been a kind of “New Reaganism”, a contradictory mix of proclamations of freedom with a willingness to aid tyrants and dodgy groups to win confrontations, with the rhetoric of the “free world” vs the “slave world” being swapped out for a narrative of the “international community” vs “rogue states” who threaten a supposed “rules based order” that keeps the world together, it’s a narrative just as lacking in credibility as the one that came before it.
A healthier framework would be an admission that the West has its own murky track record behind it, not just its rivals, bringing an end to the “victory fever” brought about by the end of the Cold War, and then setting a higher standard for ourselves and who we call our allies.
Because the sad truth is we can’t embody democracy everywhere, much of the world isn’t democratic and trying to force change from the outside can sometimes cause more harm than good, Afghanistan is a textbook example of trying to do it through war, North Korea an example of trying to do it through economics (with the approach of sanctions), neither have gone well.
But when there is an opportunity to change things for the better, taking it is an option that requires honest self reflection and integrity, is an essential ingredient to giving any future interventions a chance at not leaving behind more blood, bones and scorch marks than the crisis’ they shoulder.
Our current political systems lack both, making them poor democracy building or state building tools. After all, Western countries might be further along the journey to democracy than Saudi Arabia, Iran or Russia, having escaped the “authoritarian dictatorship” phase those countries are still stuck in, but they don’t truly embody democracy, so how can you share something you don’t have?
8.4 All is not lost #
What a ugly, complicated mess history can be! But even with all that being said, I want to end on a more positive note, one of some hope.
I’m not a cynic, I understand those who would be, who would hear of all this and feel there’s nothing they can do, because it’s hard to hear just how much a select group of people could few people could perpetually destroy so many lives, but actually, I’m not a cynic, for one simple reason, change.
Take a look at how things used to be 50 years ago, the world was divided by the Iron Curtain, millions of people walled in by their own governments, or 100 years ago, most of the countries of today didn’t even exist, they were just colonies in a world of empires and their people had no voice, go back 200 years and even the people living in those empires were silenced, with only tiny sects of the population getting a vote, if they got one at all.
So over time, the world has gotten better, more people have been emancipated and progress has been made; There are injustices of the global power contests that shouldn’t be forgotten, whether that’s the so-called “Cold War”, which for many populations was hot, or the so-called “War on Terror”, where the “counter-terrorists” imposed their own brand of terror, and there were opportunities to make the world a better place that were missed, like the failure to facilitate a compromise that would bring peace for Afghanistan as the Cold War winded down, the failure of Gorbachev’s New Union Treaty, or how for many countries in the Arab Spring, revolutions were defeated or corrupted by those who didn’t share the freedom loving ideals of early protesters; But there has been immense political change for the better and new opportunities for change will present themselves in the future, not because change is some inevitable force but because it’s something people and circumstances push through, it would be stupid to assume that stops here, those circumstances will come again, whether it’s 10, 20 or 50 years from now.
That change will reach even the highest halls of power, and it’s better for as many people to be involved in that as possible, the first step to involvement is awareness, so ultimately I would rather look at these events with my eyes wide open, and learn from them as an optimist, a quiet optimist, but an optimist.
Because I want to live in a world where helping is more important than appearing to help, where genuinely saving lives matters more than political tribalism and the dreams of would be empire builders, I want to see a world where nations can be led towards prosperity rather than a death spiral, increasing stability instead of decreasing it.
Because as much as I, and maybe you, can tune out the events happening in far away places like Afghanistan, that only works for so long before their consequences come knocking, that lesson has been spelt out time and time again in the blood, in the Twin Towers, the Paris Suburbs, the London Underground, the Manchester Arena, and so so many more places.
But the silver lining is, with more interconnectivity than ever before, where access to information is being democratised, that world is actually possible, but only if we have more walking and less sleepwalking.
Despite all the colossal mistakes, the conflicts of interest and the catastrophic consequences, I actually do believe most politicians are well meaning people, but they’re usually people clouded by a tribal bias, looking through a narrow lens, doing jobs they struggle to understand based on information fed to them by influencers: Advisors, Think Tanks, Lobbyists and Colleagues, and they don’t see the impacts of what they do first hand, on the ground.
A system like this can only exist when it rules a public that doesn’t know better, an educated population isn’t harder to govern, but it’s harder to govern poorly, and that’s exactly how it should be.
We don’t need to feel guilt or horror for problems we aren’t causing, for decisions we didn’t take, based on misunderstandings we didn’t have, but we do need to have that awareness, a sober acknowledgement that these conflicts do happen, and an understanding of why they happen.
Because you don’t need to change the world, not on your own, the world will change whether we’re driving it or not, someone will be in that driver’s seat, but you do need to start thinking, because change you sleepwalk into has far worse prospects than change you walk towards with your eyes wide open, we need to be conscious about what’s going on in the world, and the threats posed to it, so that we don’t make the same mistakes the last generations did, that’s the first building block towards a better world, awareness.
Credits #
Writing and Research - Elwood
Research Assistance - Massimiliano Camassa
Terror Family Tree designed by Elwood and Massi, created by Massi
Special Thanks:
Massi, G0utBack, Bushmann - For encouraging my work on this project and providing valuable advice
VICE News - Their documentaries and dispatches from the front lines in Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria were key inspirations for this series
Mehdi Hasan - His reporting for various news outlets as well as his Blowback series were also major influences on the project
Accursed Farms - For his eye opening commentary on plutocracy, terrorism and the military industrial complex, seen in his Deus Ex video
Footnotes #
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↩︎the United States actively supported the Iraqi war effort by supplying the Iraqis with billions of dollars of credits, by providing U.S. military intelligence and advice to the Iraqis, and by closely monitoring third country arms sales to Iraq to make sure that Iraq had the military weaponry required. The United States also provided strategic operational advice to the Iraqis to better use their assets in combat … The CIA, including both CIA Director Casey and Deputy Director Gates, knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, ammunition and vehicles to Iraq. My notes, memoranda and other documents in my NSC files show or tend to show that the CIA knew of, approved of, and assisted in the sale of non-U.S. origin military weapons, munitions and vehicles to Iraq.
- Howard Teicher (Pentagon Analyst), https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB82/iraq61.pdf Page 4 -
↩︎Pan-Islamism (Arabic: الوحدة الإسلامية) is a political movement which advocates the unity of Muslims under one Islamic country or state – often a caliphate – or an international organization with Islamic principles.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Islamism -
↩︎Pan-Arabism (Arabic: الوحدة العربية, romanized: al-wiḥda al-ʿarabīyyah) is an ideology that espouses the unification of all Arab people in a single nation-state, comprising the Arab countries of West Asia and North Africa from the Atlantic Ocean to the Arabian Sea, which is referred to as the Arab world. It is closely connected to Arab nationalism, which asserts the view that the Arabs constitute a single nation.
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pan-Arabism -
https://web.archive.org/web/20150215060854/http://www.intelligence.senate.gov/phaseiiaccuracy.pdf, Page 112 “Conclusion 5” ↩︎
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According to both the UN - https://web.archive.org/web/20210428055242/https://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/15/world/middleeast/un-criticizes-iraq-occupation-oil-sales.html And the US Congress - http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/01/30/iraq.audit/ ↩︎
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They somehow also lost over 1 billion dollars which later turned up in a bunker in Lebanon https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/oct/12/iraq-bilions-iraq-lebanese-bunker ↩︎
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↩︎The CPA maintained one fund of nearly $600m cash for which there is no paperwork: $200m of it was kept in a room in one of Saddam’s former palaces. The US soldier in charge used to keep the key to the room in his backpack, which he left on his desk when he popped out for lunch. Again, this is Iraqi money, not US funds.
> At the same time, the IAMB discovered that Iraqi oil exports were unmetered. Neither the Iraqi State Oil Marketing Organisation nor the American authorities could give a satisfactory explanation for this. “The only reason you wouldn’t monitor them is if you don’t want anyone else to know how much is going through,” one petroleum executive told me. -
↩︎ -
- Order Number 12 - Removal of all Import Taxes and Tariffs (
https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/cpa-iraq/regulations/CPAORD12.pdf)
- Order Number 39 - Unlimited foreign investment ( https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/cpa-iraq/regulations/20031220_CPAORD_39_Foreign_Investment_.pdf, key part: Section 4) https://web.archive.org/web/20040819044745/http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=15&ItemID=5916
- Order Number 49 - Massive tax cuts ( https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/cpa-iraq/regulations/20040220_CPAORD_49_Tax_Strategy_of_2004_with_Annex_and_Ex_Note.pdf, focus on area beginning “III. CORPORATE INCOME TAX 1. Lower 15 Percent Tax Rate”)
- Order Number 12 - Removal of all Import Taxes and Tariffs (
https://govinfo.library.unt.edu/cpa-iraq/regulations/CPAORD12.pdf)
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/07/iraq.comment
>laid off hundreds of thousands of Iraqi workers
>allowing foreigners to own up to 100% of all sectors except natural resources
>Over 200 state-owned enterprises, including electricity, telecommunications and pharmaceuticals have been privatised.
>companies or individuals will be allowed to lease properties for up to 40 years
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/nov/07/iraq.comment
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Also from the Guardian source: >Are these changes legal?
>These laws stand in clear violation of Iraq’s constitution, as is openly admitted. The US department of commerce notes that “the Iraqi constitution prohibits foreign ownership of immovable (real) property,” and “prohibits investment in, and establishment of, companies in Iraq by foreigners who are not resident citizens of Arab countries.” [3]
>Consider how the CPA’s new laws and massive layoffs conform to its obligations under international law [4]:
>· Hague Regulations
>Art 43: The authority of the legitimate power having in fact passed into the hands of the occupant, the latter shall take all the measures in his power to restore, and ensure, as far as possible, public order and safety, while respecting, unless absolutely prevented, the laws in force in the country. ↩︎ -
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/07/iraq.features11
>An Iraqi hospital administrator told me that when he came to sign a contract, the American army officer representing the CPA had crossed out the original price and doubled it. The Iraqi protested that the original price was enough. The American officer explained that the increase (more than $1m) was his retirement package.
>When the Iraqi Governing Council asked Bremer why a contract to repair the Samarah cement factory was costing $60m rather than the agreed $20m, the American representative reportedly told them that they should be grateful the coalition had saved them from Saddam.
>One ministry gave out $430m in contracts without its CPA advisers seeing any of the paperwork. Another claimed to be paying 8,206 guards, but only 602 could be found.
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https://www.theguardian.com/world/2005/jul/07/iraq.features11
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- https://web.archive.org/web/20140801005903/https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/uploads/Documents/pubs/ResearchNote_20_Zelin.pdf, Table 1 Page 1 of the Document
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- https://www.conflictarm.com/reports/weapons-of-the-islamic-state/, Page 6, first bullet point
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-3030472
- https://time.com/3647361/iraq-isis-governor-mosul/
- https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/australian-fighter-jets-conduct-first-armed-flights-over-iraq-20141006-10qog3.html
- https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/12/11/raf-jets-busiest-25-years-theypound-isil-positions-iraq-syria/
- https://www.vice.com/en/article/vdqxjm/new-info-has-emerged-about-canadas-controversial-battle-against-isis-127
- https://www.rtlnieuws.nl/nieuws/artikel/848221/bombardementen-nederland-top-3-actiefste-landen
- https://www.theguardian.com/world/2015/nov/15/paris-attacks-car-found-with-kalashnikovs-as-gunmans-relatives-questioned
- https://web.archive.org/web/20150923203044/http://www.christiantimes.com/article/jordan.says.7000.isis.fighters.killed.in.3.days.of.airstrikes.u.a.e.rejoins.bombings.against.jihadists/50872.htm
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https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-3030472
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2019 - https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2020/FY2020_CTEF_J-Book.pdf - Page 19
2020 - https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2021/FY2021_CTEF_J-Book.pdf - Page 27
2021 - https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2022/FY2022_CTEF_J-Book.pdf - Page 17
2022 - https://comptroller.defense.gov/Portals/45/Documents/defbudget/FY2023/FY2023_CTEF_J-Book.pdf - Page 18
We can see that the “Syria Summary” only starts listing the groups being funded from 2020 onwards ↩︎ -
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https://setav.org/en/assets/uploads/2019/10/A54En.pdf
>Thirteen of these factions were formed after the United States cut its support to the armed Syrian opposition. Out of the 28 factions, 21 were previously supported by the United States, three of them via the Pentagon’s program to combat DAESH. Eighteen of thesefactions were supplied by the CIA via the MOM Operations Room in Turkey, a joint intelligence operation room of the ‘Friends of Syria’ to support the armed opposition. Fourteen factions ofthe 28 were also recipients of the U.S.-supplied TOW anti-tank guided missiles.
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https://setav.org/en/assets/uploads/2019/10/A54En.pdf
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- https://setav.org/en/assets/uploads/2019/10/A54En.pdf, Pages 10 and 11
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“Organization for the Liberation of the Levant” ↩︎
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https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2021/Costs%20of%20War_U.S.%20Budgetary%20Costs%20of%20Post-9%2011%20Wars_9.1.21.pdf, Bottom of Page 1 and top of Page 2
>It does not include spending by the dozens of United States allies, including Australia, Britain, Canada, Denmark, Italy, the Netherlands, Romania, Germany and France. If the U.S. had not had the support of those allies, it would likely have spent more on those wars (and arguably taken more casualties).
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https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2021/Costs%20of%20War_U.S.%20Budgetary%20Costs%20of%20Post-9%2011%20Wars_9.1.21.pdf, Bottom of Page 1 and top of Page 2
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- https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2021/Costs%20of%20War_U.S.%20Budgetary%20Costs%20of%20Post-9%2011%20Wars_9.1.21.pdf, Page 3, Figure 1
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- https://watson.brown.edu/costsofwar/files/cow/imce/papers/2021/Costs%20of%20War_Vine%20et%20al_Displacement%20Update%20August%202021.pdf, Page 3, first point
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Other examples of Western backed Anti-Soviet Communists include Communist Somalia and Cambodia’s Khmer Rouge
Although the US didn’t support the Khmer Rouge militarily, they supported the opposition coalition in Cambodia which had a Khmer Rouge foreign minister and UN representative, the coalition leader who was openly backed by the US noted how they were backing the Khmer Rouge by proxy:
>Cambodian leader Norodom Sihanouk, when asked about charges of opportunism in May 1987 (“your critics would say … that you would sleep with the Devil to achieve your end”), replied: “As far as devils are concerned, the U.S.A. also supports the Khmer Rouge. Even before the forming of the Coalition Government in 1982, the U.S. each year voted in favor of the Khmer Rouge regime. … The U.S.A. says that it is against the Khmer Rouge, that it is pro-Sihanouk, pro-Son Sann. But the devils, they are there [laughs] with Sihanouk and Son Sann.”
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Allegations_of_United_States_support_for_the_Khmer_Rouge#U.S._diplomatic_support
>The Reagan program began as the United States and ASEAN were pressuring the noncommunist groups to make a coalition with the Khmer Rouge.
>China – which openly backs the Khmer Rouge – and ASEAN both supply the insurgent groups with guns and ammunition. U.S. funds go only for “nonlethal” aid, sources said.
Some sources say this claim is misleading because the U.S. aid frees up other money that can be used to buy military equipment. They also say that the Khmer Rouge benefit indirectly because the U.S. money for the other two resistance groups makes the whole coalition stronger.
Despite the “nonlethal” label on the secret U.S. aid, one knowledgeable source said that a CIA logistics expert had traveled to Thailand to discuss the ammunition needs of the noncommunists, and CIA officers work closely with the Thai military men who advise the insurgents.
Many officials acknowledge that the effort to strengthen the noncommunist resistance is a long shot. One informed source said that “of course, if the coalition wins, the Khmer Rouge will eat the others alive.
- https://archive.is/5rENz ↩︎ -
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#endnote_USMIL:~:text=Total%20U.S.%20military,%5B86%5D%5B567%5D
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf (Pages 36-40)
>Total U.S. military deaths in battle and from other causes were 407,316. The breakout by service is as follows: Army 318,274 (234,874 battle, 83,400 nonbattle), Navy 62,614, Marine Corps 24,511, and the Coast Guard 1,917.
>Deaths in battle were 292,131. The breakout by service is as follows: Army 234,874, Navy 36,950, Marine Corps 19,733, and Coast Guard 574. These losses were incurred during the period 12/8/41 until 12/31/46.
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#endnote_USMIL:~:text=Total%20U.S.%20military,%5B86%5D%5B567%5D
https://sgp.fas.org/crs/natsec/RL32492.pdf (Pages 36-40)
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