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