In a paper titled “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen-eighties,” Oded Yinon — a journalist attached to the Israeli foreign ministry — wrote “Every Arab conflict is in Israel’s interests.”
As old as it is, it remains relevant to understanding the mess this region is in. His following points are particularly pertinent to contemporary realities:
l The dissolution of Syria and Iraq later on into ethnically or religiously unique areas…is Israel’s primary target on the eastern front.
l Syria will fall apart, in accordance with its ethnic and religious structure into several states.
l Iraq, rich in oil on the one hand and internally torn on the other is guaranteed as a candidate for Israel’s target.
l The entire Arabian Peninsula is a natural candidate for dissolution due to internal and external pressures.
l If Egypt falls apart, countries like Libya, Sudan or even the more distant states will not continue to exist in their present form and will join the downfall and dissolution of Egypt.
Fast forward to the 2001 Neoconservative blueprint “The Project for a New American Century” signed by many Israel-Firsters in George W. Bush’s Cabinet, that advocates serial wars, hikes in US military bases, the ousting of non-compliant regimes and a permanent role for the US in the security of the Gulf region. Adding grist to that mill was the 2007 revelation by a retired US Army general, Wesley Clark, who was the Supreme Commander of NATO during the Kosovo War. Gen. Clark recounted two visits to the Pentagon in late September 2001. On both occasions, he met with a general who disclosed in confidence that the US had inexplicably decided to go to war with Iraq and showed him a classified memorandum describing how the US was going to “take out seven countries in five years, starting with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and finishing off Iran.”
Nobody can accuse President Obama of following the Neoconservative line and under his watch there’ve been no overt invasion plans. At the same time, the region is fragmenting as never before. Whereas as Bush believed in proactive interventions, Obama virtually stands back while feuding parties battle it out in Iraq, Syria and Libya causing hundreds-of-thousands of deaths and millions made refugees. A cynic might interpret this lack of action as “why should we soil our hands when they’re doing the job for us, killing each other.”
The leader of the free world, so called, has done nothing at all to prevent the bloodshed in Syria, apart from training “moderates” in the opposition and on this, Vice President Biden inadvertently spilled the beans at Harvard admitting there are no “moderates” among anti-regime fighters. The battlefield has become so complex that it’s hard to decipher who’s fighting whom.
There’s a cartoon that says it all. Headed “News item: The President considers bombing Syria” it shows fighter jets in the air above placards reading, “Syria, Assad, rebels, Al-Qaeda, ISIL” (Nusrah Front, Hezbollah and Iran’s Republican Guard are missing). Bubbles show one pilot asking the other, “Which side are we on?” His colleague replies, “I don’t know.”
It’s a similar story in Iraq. Yes, he has authorized air strikes but they’ve hardly dented Daesh’s ability to grab more territory and his administration has been accused by the Iraqi premier of failing to share intelligence and his calls for effective US weapons unheeded, he’s asking for permission to buy weapons from Iran. The pleas of Iraqi Kurds and Sunni Arab tribes for arms and funds have also been ignored and just a few days ago many of the most influential tribes in Al-Anbar province had decided “if you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em” and pledged allegiance to Daesh. Like Syria, Iraq has evolved into a bloody free-for-all involving the Iraqi Army, Shiite militias, Iran’s elite Quds Force, Hezbollah in Iraq, Daesh, Sunni tribes and the Kurdish Peshmerga.
Libya is yet another Arab country in chaos. There, Daesh is expanding in numbers thanks to the influx of foreign militants as well as territorially. Today, the group controls Qaddafi’s hometown Misurata, an air base and the airport in Sirte as well as the city of Derna, home to its H.Q. Egypt launched strikes on Daesh targets in response to its beheading of Christians and was condemned by the US for doing so. Moreover, the US has refused to supply arms to the internationally-recognized government.
I’ll repeat the words of Oded Yinon: “Every Arab conflict is in Israel’s interests” — and by extension America’s. There is not only a possibility that such conflicts could result in the break-up of Arab states into bite-sized, easy-to-control pieces, they also feed America’s ever-thirsty military-industrial complex and ensure the longevity of US bases in as yet unaffected regional states, which seek protection.
In a perfect world, Arab leaderships should take their eyes off the details to study the big picture and work together to combat those forces out to destroy the MENA region, as we know it and to form a powerful bulkhead to thwart Iranian ambitions. “United we stand, divided we fall” may have derived from an Aesop’s fable, but unity is the only way this part of the world can be preserved intact.
