A joke making the rounds among Russian officials and hacks who take a keen interest in what is going on in the Middle East these days goes something like this: How will the Yanks deal with the Islamic State group? They will create “Islamic State 2″, a bigger and better armed group, and let it deal with the original Islamic State group. And what happens when “Islamic State 2″ turns against them as it happened with the original Islamic State? They will create “Islamic State 3″, and so on.
But seriously, the rise and spread of the Islamic State group is no laughing matter. Now that the US and its allies have finally woken up to the dangers of the spread of the extremist group, the worry in Moscow is that the hotheads in the Pentagon and at Nato headquarters in Brussels will decide to start hitting Islamic State positions in Syria along with “other targets” there as well – for instance, Syrian army positions.
US President Barack Obama has already announced his plan to deal with the group, promising to lead a “broad coalition” that will “roll back this terrorist threat”. In Moscow, the fear is that the US will seize this opportunity to intervene in Syria.
According to Valeriy Fenenko from the Moscow Centre for International Security, the US can actually use the presence of the Islamic State group in Syria as a pretext to implement the “Libyan scenario”.
“The Americans are bound to try to compensate for their failure last fall,” he says. “At first, it will be air strikes against terrorists and then, in parallel, it may amount to helping the moderate opposition. The US may start a creeping interference, like it happened in Bosnia,” he said.
In any event, Russian diplomatic efforts are in full swing. According to one Russian source, Moscow is trying to prevent possible air strikes in Syria by the US, UK and others, in the same way it did last year when the danger of air strikes was growing by the day.
“Our people in Arab and European capitals were desperately trying to find some sort of solution last year,” he said. “The threat of a regional war that could escalate into a world war was taken very seriously by the Kremlin. And this scenario is in the cards again.”
The feeling in Moscow is that the recent Nato summit in Newport, Wales, missed out on a great opportunity to involve Russia in finding a solution to the spread of the Islamic State group and other militant groups associated with it across Iraq and the Middle East generally. Not to mention, the very real threat of these violent men entering European countries, and even reaching the US.
“The Russians have been warning the Americans ever since the civil war broke out in Syria that it was very dangerous to arm the opposition there,” one former Russian general who was in charge of anti-terrorist operation told me. “There was no chance that the arms destined for the so-called moderate opposition would not end up with the likes of the Islamic State. Not to mention that lots of it was coming as well from ‘liberated’ Libya.”
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There is no gain saying the fact that the US government is a war monger. The proliferation of weapons all over the world are the handiwork of US. The so called world police had created problems more than it try to solve. most terrorist groups are products of US over bearing attitude, arrogance and disrespect to the government of other nations and their territorial integrity. ISIS are serious global treat their activities if left unchecked could result to global catastrophy.
ReplyDelete"........what a terrorist religion, a cursed people" . Please let us use our heads before we run comments. Now that Oritsajafor is involved in corrupt practice can we say Christianity is a religion of corruption?
ReplyDeleteNE, Please always check comments and ensure they cannot cause uproar before same is published.
My question is "why is it that people hide under Islam for terrorism"? This is a question begging for answers. Boko haram in Nigeria, ISIL in syria and its neighborhood, Qaeda group in Afghanistan, Ashabas in Kenya, mali to mention but few are all fighting in the name of islam why? pls, can some one clear the air on this issue? the world is heading to doom in the name of islam. Funny enough the islamic leaders are doing less or nothing about it only lips services. pls, let's unite to fight this menace otherwise, those who abated and aided will be the next victim to axed. Thanks.
ReplyDelete