America Is Only … 'Concerned'

Washington is concerned. When Washington worries, often, the source of its worries is one of the CIA’s reports.

In a meeting with a committee from the U.S. Congress, CIA Director John Brennan raised the alarm about al-Qaida’s exploitation of the Syrian conflict to develop its military capacity, specifically to develop a long-term scheme aimed at developing terrorist cells in Syria. Its mission is attracting “volunteers” from western countries and training them to execute “terrorist” missions outside of Syria.

The CIA mentioned that about 1,200 American and European Muslims are fighting now in the ranks of extremist Islamist factions in Syria, presenting this information as confirmation. It [the CIA] expressed its fear of these factions increasing their immersion in the civil war in Syria, such as through their recruitment [by extremist factions] to carry out terrorist attacks in their own countries after returning to them.

There is no forum to discuss the validity of the CIA’s information, an excerpt of which was published in The New York Times. However, the excerpt did not reveal the CIA’s report of an analysis by some “American advisors” – the newspaper did not reveal their names or positions – because of the “recovered”” al-Qaida plots. The door is wide open to questions, not only about the political motivations of what the American media calls “Islamic terrorism,” but also about who connects al-Qaida to positions that threaten the security of the great states of the world.

Based on those “American advisors,” al-Qaida’s plans return to posing a direct threat to the United States, against the backdrop of two prominent developments: The first goes back to the “ease” with which al-Qaida groups arrive to Iraqi territory and infiltrate the network of cells established in Iraq. The second relates to what the American administration showed with the delay of military strikes, which occur through drones or by other means, on specific Syrian targets.

Preferably, if “the American advisors” analyzed the background of the two developments that they regard as favorable to al-Qaida’s plans, they would also take into account causes of Arab “anxiety” from Washington’s Middle Eastern diplomacy. They might find that what transformed Iraq into a field forfeited to al-Qaida was America’s hasty occupation of it and the failed administering of that occupation that supported the “dismantling” of the Iraqi Army, ignoring that it was the backbone of Iraq’s security and stability.

As if the wrong security decisions were not enough, dumping Iraq in the furnace of blatant sectarian war, and for the occupation to intercede in the war by implanting a fragile democratic successor system, makes many Iraqis ask for God’s mercy for the dictator Saddam Hussein.

As for the position in Syria, it is remarkable that the “American advisors” recognize that what started as a popular peaceful uprising, demanding personal and political freedom for Syrians, because of the American delay in aiding them and possibly thanks to it, developed into a civil war and provided fertile soil to a growing al-Qaida and a number of extremist militants. After Washington refrained from supplying the fighters of the Syrian Free Army with various weapons that would have enabled the latter to face the regime’s air force, [Washington] responded to the Syrian regime’s chemical weapons bombing of Ghouta, Damascus with “reluctance” (so as not to say refusal) to implement and recognize it [the bombing] by striking Syrian military targets. It lost an opportunity to tip the scales for the moderate and nonsectarian opposition. Also, through America’s promotion of the Syrian Free Army over Islamist extremist factions and the granting of the Islamist extremists’ claim that “it does no good pleasing the Americans,” what remained of the good will from President Barack Obama’s speech in 2009 in Cairo was dashed.

At the time, President Obama called for a “new beginning” with the Islamic world; he pledged to work “in partnership with Muslim communities which are also threatened” by terrorism, and that the sooner “the extremists are isolated and unwelcome in Muslim communities, the sooner we will all be safer.”

On this level, President Obama realized some successes, not the least of which was killing the head of the Taliban, Osama bin Ladin. However, five years after the Cairo speech, the question of the Arab world is no longer “What did Obama do to radical Islam?” Rather, it is “What is his administration doing today for the ‘moderate Islamic’ countries (characterized as such by Washington itself) to enhance their resistance in the face of extremist currents?”