The eruption of sectarianism in the Middle East is often depicted as the result of the reemergence of ancestral hatreds. The conflicts in Iraq, Syria, and Yemen would be the almost inevitable consequence of the split of Islam between Sunni and Shia Muslims shortly after the death of the Prophet Muhammad, a simmering animosity which periodically bursts out into violence, like reported by mei.edu.

Some experts have contested this interpretation, pointing out that such an eruption was not a spontaneous phenomenon, but a conscious policy adopted by certain authoritarian regimes seeking to forestall challenges to their legitimacy and ensure their own survival. At home, those regimes resorted to the classical divide-and-rule strategy to prevent the formation of broadly-based coalitions which could claim to represent popular will. Abroad, they manipulated sectarian differences to weaken their foreign enemies.

This article focuses on the ideological threat that prompted those authoritarian regimes to play the sectarian card: the spread of Islamism. It argues that, at its core, the rift in the Middle East is not a sectarian clash opposing Sunnis and Shiites — although after years of bloody conflict, many of the actors involved have come to see it that way. It is a geopolitical battle between, on the one side, states and groups aligned with the West and interested in preserving the regional status quo; and, on the other, states and groups characterized by their anti-Western rhetoric and eager to subvert that status quo. In some regards, it is a replay of what Malcolm H. Kerr called the Arab Cold War — but extended to Iran, and with Islamism replacing Arab socialism as the subverting ideology.

Islamism as a Destabilizing Factor

Islamism became a powerful political force in the 1970s, fomented by leaders such as Egyptian President Anwar al-Sadat and Pakistani President Zia-ul-Haq, who were seeking to consolidate their position and undermine the Left-wing parties and groups which had hitherto dominated the political landscape. Its growth was financed by autocratic regimes which felt threatened by the popularity of revolutionary ideologies on the Arab and Muslim streets, particularly Saudi Arabia. Over the previous decades, the Kingdom had welcomed thousands of Muslim Brothers fleeing Egypt, Syria, and Iraq, and provided their organization with the resources to operate and expand in the Muslim world and beyond. In the changing environment of the 1970s and 1980s, the Islamists attracted wide public support by virtue of their populist rhetoric, but also the basic services they offered to rapidly growing populations in increasingly overcrowded cities. But they had their own agenda, different from that of the regimes which backed or, at least, tolerated them. A clash was inevitable.

Egypt was central to developments, as it had been between the 1930s, when Islamism first became a mass movement under the leadership of Hassan al-Banna, and the 1950s, when Sayyid Qutb was its most influential ideologue. Sadat’s ideological, political and economic realignment was resisted by Nasserists and other Leftists. In order to counter them, he released the Muslim Brothers from prison, encouraged the appearance of Islamist groups at Egyptian universities, and portrayed himself as “the pious president” (al-ra’is al-mu’min). However, opposition to his policies induced Sadat to become ever more authoritarian. For the Islamists, the last straw was the signature of the Camp David Accords in 1978. In 1981, Sadat was assassinated by Islamic Jihad, who were confident that their action would incite a popular uprising. It did not happen. Nor did the ensuing repression eradicate the Islamist groups. Instead, Egypt experienced a period of low-intensity civil war, which peaked in the 1990s with the return of the “Afghan Arabs.”

But the emergence of Islamism had its most dramatic consequences in Iran. Iranian Islamism, despite its specificities — it was not Arab and Sunni, but Persian and Shiite — was influenced by Sunni Islamism as it developed in the Arab world. And the Islamic Revolution responded to dynamics similar to those in Egypt: It was to a great extent a reaction against a regime that was both oppressive and closely allied to the US. The mobilizations against the Shah had a wide popular base, but eventually Ayatollah Khomeini and his followers were able to steer them in their favor and take over. Khomeini made no secret of his desire to export his revolution, posing a serious ideological challenge to Iran’s Arab neighbors, especially those with significant Shiite populations. Iraq, Kuwait, Bahrain, and Saudi Arabia all saw major Shiite disturbances, which contributed to Saddam Hussein’s decision to attack Iran in 1980 and to the Gulf monarchies’ support for Iraq during the ensuing eight-year war.

Not even Saudi Arabia was spared the destabilizing effects of Islamism. Many of the Muslim Brothers who arrived in the country in the 1950s and 1960s were highly qualified professionals, and they went on to make a significant contribution to the development of the Kingdom, particularly in the civil service and higher education. Some of them, such as Sayyid Qutb’s younger brother, Muhammad, became influential among certain sectors of the Saudi intelligentsia, giving rise to the Sahwa (Awakening) movement. The latter combined Salafism and Islamism and sought political reform, challenging the despotism of the ruling family. The movement became very vocal after Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1990 and King Fahd invited foreign troops into Saudi Arabia to protect it from Iraqi aggression. The Saudi authorities decided that the Muslim Brotherhood was more trouble than it was worth and scaled back their support for the organization, focusing instead on Salafi shaykhs and groups. Keen to raise its international profile, Qatar was happy to take over and become the Brotherhood’s main backer.

The Impact of the Arab Spring

Despite their political differences, relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia gradually improved after the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait, which Tehran condemned. The 1990s ended with Mohammad Khatami paying an official visit to Riyadh, the first by a president of the Islamic Republic, and in April 2001 the two countries signed a security agreement. The trend continued with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, in spite of his more belligerent rhetoric and arguably because the Gulf monarchies felt reassured by the ever-growing US involvement in the Middle East under George W. Bush. In 2007 Ahmadinejad visited Saudi Arabia and, later that year, became the first Iranian president to attend a Gulf Cooperation Council meeting, during which he proposed a security pact and a free trade agreement.

The situation changed after Barack Obama became US president and opted for a less interventionist approach in the Middle East. Fatefully, this coincided with the outbreak of the Arab Spring. To Saudi Arabia’s dismay, Obama refused to prop up Washington’s traditional Arab allies, notably Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, and seemed eager to work with his democratically-elected successor, Muslim Brother Mohamed Morsi. Obama was also reluctant to support the Syrian rebels who took up arms against Bashar al-Assad. Worse, he was willing to overlook the role of Tehran in that conflict and continued the negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program. Symptomatic of the new regional climate was Morsi’s participation in a summit of the Non-Aligned Movement in Tehran in August 2012, which was followed by Ahmadinejad’s trip to Cairo in February 2013 — the first such exchange of visits since the Islamic Revolution.

The Islamists were the political force best placed to take advantage of the 2011 popular revolts, which Iran hastened to portray as the second wave its own “Islamic Awakening.” In order to promote this narrative, Tehran set up the World Assembly for the Islamic Awakening, which held its first conference in September that year. It was reportedly attended by over 700 delegates from 84 countries, and the themes were familiar: the existence of a single, worldwide Muslim Ummah, which should be united against “the predatory powers led by the US”; the promotion of an Islamic system of governance “backed and supported by the will of the people” and distinct from Western-style democracy; and support for the “valiant struggle of the people of Palestine facing Zionist aggression.” Those themes resonate with large swaths of the Arab and Muslim streets, where there is resentment over Western interventionism and perceived arrogance, and widespread solidarity with the long-suffering Palestinians.

But Tehran’s vision had a fundamental weakness: Syria. In fact, there was great uneasiness in Iran about supporting Bashar al-Assad when he repressed the demonstrations demanding democratic reforms in 2011. Even hawkish Ahmadinejad criticized the use of violence by Assad’s government and admonished him to be accountable to his people’s demands. However, Syria is crucial for Iran: it is its only longstanding Arab ally, and a key component of its “Axis of Resistance,” providing access to the Levant — the main arena of the Arab-Israeli struggle — and serving as a major channel for assistance to Hezbollah. In addition, Sunni states soon started backing Salafi militias within the Syrian rebellion. For Saudi Arabia, it meant killing two birds with one stone: getting rid of a hostile neighbor and, simultaneously, undermining Iran’s narrative by framing Tehrna’s actions in sectarian terms. Its own propaganda machine swung into full gear.

Sectarianism and Islamism as Political Strategies

The Iranian leadership felt that it had no choice but to throw in its lot with Assad. It insisted on its own propaganda, labelling Syria “the golden link in the chain of resistance” which stretches from Iran to Hezbollah and Hamas. In addition, it emphasized the support of the Islamic Republic for Sunni Muslims, especially in Palestine, and denounced takfiri groups such as Daesh as part of a Western-Zionist ploy to stain the reputation of Islam and divert attention from the fight against Israel. With limited success: As well as exacerbating sectarian tensions across the region, the situation in Syria has put considerable strain on the relationship between the Iranian regime and Sunni Islamists like Hamas. And it has done much harm to the reputation of Hezbollah, formerly lionized for its role in the Arab-Israeli conflict.

The threat posed by the Islamist ideology promoted by Iran thus played a significant role in Saudi Arabia’s decision to foment sectarianism by sponsoring Salafism. That threat also explains Saudi moves against the Muslim Brotherhood, notably favoring the coup that deposed Morsi in July 2013 and adding it to its list of terrorist organizations in March 2014 — alongside Daesh and al-Qaeda-linked Jabhat al-Nusra! It also throws light on the rift with Qatar, which already made headlines in 2014. With the highest GDP per capita in the world and a homogenous indigenous population, the House of Al Thani is less concerned than neighboring dynasties about the possibility of challenges to its rule. However, other Arab states have long been irked by its support for the Muslim Brotherhood and by Al-Jazeera’s pro-Islamist bias.

But if Saudi Arabia is anxious about regime survival, so is Iran. The recent decisive reelection of President Hassan Rouhani over the candidate backed by Supreme Leader ‘Ali Khamenei has yet again illustrated the unpopularity of the conservative forces which control the Islamic Republic. Many Iranians saw the Arab Spring not as the second wave of the Islamic Revolution as purveyed by the official propaganda, but as a continuation of their own mobilizations in 2009-2010, when they protested against the likely electoral fraud that allowed Ahmadinejad to obtain a second term. Those mobilizations were harshly repressed, while demonstrators, dubbed the “Satanic current,” went on to create the Green Movement that brought Rouhani to power in 2013. For the Iranian regime, foreign policy is crucial to strengthening its shaky position at home.

Conclusion

As this historical overview shows, taking a long-term perspective can be very useful in the analysis of present-day events. In this case, the dynamics brought about by Islamism shed light on the conflict between Saudi Arabia and Iran, which is the main factor behind the current instability in the Middle East. As we have seen, the Saudi regime promotes Sunni sectarianism in order to present itself as a defender of Islamic orthodoxy and depicts Iran as a fanatical Shiite state moved by purely sectarian motives. Conversely, the Iranian regime promotes Islamism not only because it is the ideology upon which the Islamic Republic is built, but also to attract Sunni Muslims with a narrative which glosses over sectarian differences and questions the legitimacy of its Western-aligned rivals. Recognizing these motivations reveals that the conflict is more political than sectarian, which means that it could be tackled if the political will was there, and that Sunnis and Shiites are not locked in an eternal struggle against each other.

Abu Lolo (or Abu Luluah) was an assassin. He murdered the caliph Omar in 644 AD. He was a Persian and a slave, allegedly captured after the defeat of the Persians at the Battle of al-Qadisiyya in 636 AD. The story of that small shrine is one key to a better understanding of the Sunni-Shia schism in Islam, which has a powerful influence on tensions in the Middle East, like reported by newstatesman.com .

The Sunni-led Saudi Arabia and the Shia Iran each have intense difficulties. The low oil price is a problem for both. Saudi Arabia is struggling in its war in Yemen, where it has been trying since 2012 to help the government of Abd Rabbuh Mansur Hadi reassert itself against the Houthi rebels who have taken over much of the western part of the country. There is little evidence that the Houthis had much support from Iran at the beginning, but Saudi Arabia declared them to have been Iranian-backed all along and the Houthis have increasingly turned to Iran as they have come under pressure. Meanwhile, Yemen descends into chaos, hunger and disease.

The Saudis are also looking less than sure-footed in their confrontation with Qatar. But since the beginning of this year, Saudi Arabia has profited from Donald Trump’s determination to distance himself from the policies of his predecessor. Where Barack Obama agreed a deal with Iran to stop the spread of nuclear weapons and took a cooler view of Saudi Arabia, Trump has hastened to ingratiate himself with the Saudis and has increased rhetorical pressure on Iran, renewing talk of a policy of regime change. Both Iran and Saudi Arabia continue to treat the war in Syria, in particular, as an extension of their regional and sectarian rivalry. The defeat of Islamic State (IS) in Mosul reopens the question of how Iraq will be governed, and by whom.

In this context of heightened sectarianism, symbols matter. For Sunni Muslims, the murdered Omar was one of the four Rashidun, the righteous caliphs who were the earliest successors to the prophet Muhammad, and a figure to be revered. On the other side, Shia Muslims have in the past venerated Abu Lolo, though he became a religious figure only by accident. He was probably not even a Muslim, let alone a Shia, and he seems to have killed Omar over a personal grudge. The Shias believed that Omar deserved to die because he was a usurper; according to them, Muhammad’s friend and son-in-law Ali should have ruled after the prophet’s death. This dispute about the succession lies at the core of the Sunni-Shia schism.

At one time, events were held each year in Iran to celebrate Omar’s assassination. But that evening in Kashan, my friend explained that Abu Lolo’s shrine had been closed since the revolution of 1979 – there was a guard at the door to stop anyone going in. Yet the mere existence of the shrine is offensive to Sunni Muslims and, from time to time, activists from other countries demand that it be demolished.

The closure of this small shrine was not a major political event but it illustrated something significant about the Islamic republic. After 1979, Ayatollah Khomeini ordered an end to many practices offensive to Sunni Muslims, which had been encouraged by Iran’s Shia rulers in earlier centuries, including the veneration of Abu Lolo.

Khomeini spoke strongly against the king of Saudi Arabia and some other Arab leaders but did so because he regarded them as decadent and ungodly and because they were too closely allied with the United States, not because they were Sunni. He attempted to reach out to all Muslims, but for Sunni Muslims Khomeini represented Shia Iran, and thus his influence in the Islamic world outside Iran was limited.

More than 85 per cent of the world’s Muslims are Sunni, and historically many have distrusted and disliked Shias. Yet the Islamic Revolution had a major effect outside Iran. Its revolutionaries set out to overturn the accepted idea of the time: that the future for the developing world in general – and the Middle East in particular – was progress on a Western model.

Some Sunnis in the wider Islamic world, discontented with their own secular-minded, materialistic, Western-inclined rulers, took in that message. They were not open to Iranian leadership but may have been shamed by the Iranian example. Sunni Islam was for them the correct, rightful form of Islam, yet it had been the incorrect Shia tradition that had stood up against impiety and Western cultural encroachment.

On 20 November 1979, just ten months after Khomeini and his followers seized power in Iran’s Islamic Revolution, a Sunni radical called Juhayman al-Otaybi occupied the Grand Mosque in Mecca with between 200 and 300 armed supporters. They denounced the Saud family for corruption and for being too open to Western influence, as well as Saudi clerics for not speaking up against these evils. Juhayman demanded that television be banned; that non-Muslims should be expelled from Saudi Arabia; that Muslims should depose their corrupt leaders; and that there should be a return to the way of life and the example of the prophet.

After the occupation, Juhayman and his supporters were besieged by Saudi security forces for two weeks until they were finally overwhelmed (allegedly with help from France and others) at the beginning of December. Juhayman was beheaded, along with most of his surviving followers.

The foundation of Saudi power in Arabia was a pact between the Saud family and the reformist scholar and preacher Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, who died in 1792. The version of Sunni Islam preached by Abd al-Wahhab was fundamentalist and puritanical, emphasising monotheism (tawhid) and the rejection of innovation (bid’a) and idolatry (shirk).

When the modern state of Saudi Arabia was established after the First World War, Wahhabism (its adherents usually prefer the term Salafism) was established as the dominant doctrine. It was hostile to other Muslim traditions and innovations such as Shiism or Sufism, with their veneration of saints, shrines and tombs and their openness to non-scriptural elements such as philosophy and mysticism in religious thinking. Wahhabism was also hostile to Christianity, Judaism and other religions.

For some Saudis, Juhayman’s occupation of the holy centre of Islam in Mecca felt like a prod to a guilty conscience. The Saud family was vulnerable to accusations that it had neglected its own values. That is why Khalid, the then Saudi king, responded not by combating religious extremism but by appeasing and embracing it, turning the country away from Western models (at least on the surface) and back to the harsh principles of Wahhabism.

On a superficial level, dress codes were revised. Western clothing was abandoned, men and women went back to traditional robes and hijabs and cinemas were closed. The Wahhabi clergy was given a greater role in government, especially in education, and teaching took a more traditional turn. And crucially, the government stepped up its support and (lavish) funding for the preaching of Wahhabism in other countries around the world, building mosques and schools, including many in Britain. This was intended to counter the ideological threat from Khomeini’s Iran, which continued to preach against the decadence of Sunni Arab rulers, and was suspected of fomenting unrest among Shias in Kuwait and in the eastern provinces of Saudi Arabia.

Since 1979, the advance of Saudi-funded Wahhabism has been inexorable. One marker has been the spread of the niqab to countries where previously it was unknown, such as Pakistan and Egypt, and to Muslim communities in Europe. The internet has accelerated the spread of Wahhabism; many websites and social media feeds are now heavily marked by Wahhabi-inspired prejudices, including overwhelming quantities of anti-Shia hate speech. Shias are both despised and feared.

Beyond Wahhabism, another aspect of the Saudis’ distaste for Shias, and for other Sunni ruling elites in the Arab world, derives from traditional social and political patterns in the region. Before 1918, the Ottomans used regional Sunni elites to enforce their authority in the provinces of their empire. When the empire and the Sunni caliphate came to an end after 1918, those elites continued to wield influence in much of the former Ottoman territory, albeit under the authority of new colonial governments. Even when imperial governments disappeared and Arab nationalism became a renewed political force after the Second World War, most of the new, secular nationalists ruling in Egypt, Iraq and elsewhere came from Sunni origins; Saddam Hussein was a typical example.

The fall of Saddam Hussein in 2003 and his replacement by a democratically elected, Shia-led government was a shock to Sunnis and especially to the Gulf monarchies, whose Sunni elites may not have liked Saddam but liked the Shia regime even less and saw any improvement in the position of the Shias as a front for the regional advance of Iran. The situation was worsened by the politically immature pro-Shia partisanship of Nouri al-Maliki’s Iraq government after his election as prime minister in 2006. This made Iraqi Sunnis feel even more marginalised, after many of them had been ejected from the army and the government by the US-led coalition.

The humiliation of the Sunnis in Iraq and the spread of Wahhabi ideology led to support for al-Qaeda and a spate of bombings from 2003 against Shia targets and shrines, such as the destruction of the dome of the shrine at Samarra in February 2006. Large numbers of Shias were also killed in suicide and car bombings. Shias responded in 2004-05 with large-scale killings of Sunnis by militia death squads. Sectarian killing by both sides intensified in Iraq until brought under control by the US troop “surge” in 2007, when President George Bush sent 20,000 extra US troops to Baghdad and Anbar Province to knock back the insurgency and stabilise the Iraqi government.

The Sunni groups that the US had encouraged to turn against al-Qaeda as part of the surge strategy nonetheless felt abandoned later. They remained deeply hostile to the Maliki government, and this helped to create the conditions for the rise of Islamic State. As with the Sunni insurgency before 2007, IS has drawn recruits from around the region and beyond, but more from Saudi Arabia than anywhere else (apart from Tunisia). Whatever the level of support from within Saudi Arabia for IS, at whatever stage, it is clear that the Saudi government supported other Sunni rebels in Syria fighting the Assad regime, including the al-Qaeda offshoot al-Nusra Front, in order to hit back against Iran. Iran has supported and funded its own proxies in Syria, including the Lebanese Hezbollah, as well as the Assad government.

It is a long way from Abu Lolo to Islamic State, but the connection is a direct one. Neither side in the Iran-Saudi confrontation has anything like a monopoly of virtue. There is fault on both sides, but not necessarily a symmetry of fault. The Iranian regime is authoritarian and paternalistic, abuses human rights and is accused of supporting terrorism – but on most of these counts, it is not the worst in the region. Iran’s past rhetoric has contributed to sectarian tensions, and the country’s support for militias who use violence to gratify their grievances against Sunnis does further damage. But the Iranian regime has distanced itself from the Shia extremism of the past, including the veneration of Abu Lolo. There is nothing on the Iranian or Shia side to compare with the damage done by the extreme Wahhabi world-view that led to the attacks of 11 September 2001, the atrocities of IS in Iraq and Syria and its outrages in Paris, Nice, London and Manchester. However paranoid the Saudis are, and whatever the degree to which they believe their own propaganda about Iran, they know the greatest threat to their retention of power in Saudi Arabia is from home-grown Wahhabi extremists.

Iranian policy, since at least the end of the Iran-Iraq War in 1988, has been, in essence, defensive (and its defence spending is low; for over a decade, between half and one-third that of Saudi Arabia). Iran’s self-defeating position towards Israel, made more serious by the Iranian Revolutionary Guards’ relationship with the Lebanese Hezbollah and egregious anti-Semitic outbursts, is an exception. The official position of both Iran and Hezbollah is that all means, including violence, are legitimate in resistance to Israel. It is this that permits the misleading accusation, heard ever more frequently since Trump’s inauguration, that Iran is the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism (it appears that the Iranians ceased their support for Hamas in or around 2013). Yet even Hezbollah has reduced its violent activity towards Israel, as it tries to present itself as a Lebanese political party rather than a paramilitary group. The reality is that most Islamic terrorism internationally is associated with Sunni militant groups.

Iran is also accused of seeking hegemony or destabilising the region through its support for militias in Iraq, but this accusation is perverse. It ignores how, whether we like them or not, these militias are a prime prop to the Shia-led government of Iraq, which the US and the UK also support, and have been a leading element in the fight against IS in Mosul and elsewhere. The militias have committed atrocities against Sunnis in Iraq (the Iranian proxies in Syria have also perpetrated horrors) and may create future problems, but they are essentially an Iraqi phenomenon. Iraqi Shias have an ambivalent attitude to Iran, sharing much of the mistrust that Sunni Iraqis and other Arabs have towards the Iranians. Many Iraqi Shias (including Moqtada al-Sadr, a Shia cleric who led the so-called Mahdi militia against coalition forces in Iraq until forced to flee to Iran in 2007) regard closer relations with Iran as a necessity for the time being, rather than a desirable or permanent fixture.

Both Saudi Arabia and Iran are pursuing regional policies underpinned by fear and insecurity. The Iranians look at the map and see themselves encircled by anti-Shia Sunni states and by US deployments in the region; the US still follows and appeases a Saudi account of regional tension. Iran’s view of the world is largely formed by its experience of the bloody Iran-Iraq War (1980-88), which it fought in isolation against a similar constellation of overt and covert enemies.

The Saudis and other Gulf Arabs fear Iran partly from a justified resentment of past Iranian rhetoric, but also because they know the fragility of their own grip on power. They are ruling rentier states dependent on oil money to keep subject populations docile, with armed forces of doubtful effectiveness that have to be stiffened by mercenaries (from Pakistan and Colombia, for example) when serious ground fighting is in prospect. They are terrified by the extremists that their policies helped to create.

Western political scientists, often with Marxist assumptions half-submerged, are sometimes heard to suggest that religious division is no more than a fig leaf for hege­monic aggrandisement in the rivalry between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Yet the reality belies that reductive view. The Sunni-Shia divide legitimises acts and interventions that would otherwise be unacceptable. It stimulates and deepens partisan paranoia (as the Abu Lolo example illustrates), and most dangerously, encourages exaggeration, misrepresentation and miscalculation of the motives and actions of the other side.

It should be obvious that in this overheated atmosphere, it is foolish to support the slanted world-view of one side against that of the other. But this is exactly what we in the UK and the US have been doing.

Those who defend UK policy towards Saudi Arabia have sometimes done so on the curious grounds that we would achieve nothing by taking a more critical line: that the Saudis would take no notice, and we would merely lose influence (and lucrative arms sales contracts). But the Saudis like to hear us agree with them. We appease them and reassure them, and it is good neither for our understanding of the region, nor for theirs. Whether or not we can make a major difference, we should not be applying our weight to the wrong side of the balance.

With Iran, it should be possible slowly to rebuild better relations, but we have to show that we want to do so – and mean it. If, instead, in accordance with what in David Cameron’s time was called the prosperity agenda, we behave as though the most important thing about Iran is avoiding damage to our relations with Saudi Arabia, we will get nowhere.

On 4 June, after the London Bridge terrorist attacks, Theresa May said that there had been “far too much tolerance” of Islamic extremism in the UK. Well, yes, including by the UK government, of extremism fostered and funded by the Saudi government and private Saudi individuals. On 5 July, a report (Foreign Funded Islamist Extremism in the UK) was published by the Henry Jackson Society, showing the connection between Saudi funding for Wahhabi extremism beyond its shores and terrorist acts committed in the UK. The report repays detailed reading, but a key paragraph from its summary reads: “The foreign funding for Islamist extremism in Britain primarily comes from governments and government-linked foundations based in the Gulf, as well as Iran. Foremost among these has been Saudi Arabia, which since the 1960s has sponsored a multimillion-dollar effort to export Wahhabi Islam across the Islamic world, including to Muslim communities in the West.”

This should not have been a surprise to anyone, but it should now have consequences for our policy towards Saudi Arabia. We should be pressing the Saudis to stop their funding for hatred both in the UK and around the world.

And what of Donald Trump, his enthusiastic trip to Saudi Arabia in May 2017, and his denunciation of Iran as the central cause of terrorism and instability in the Middle East? There is a peculiarity about Trump’s Saudi policy. Before he was elected as US president, he made many highly critical statements about Saudi Arabia (explored in a recent book by Brendan Simms and Charlie Laderman, Donald Trump: the Making of a World-View), including the following characteristically pungent statement in 2011 (from Trump’s book Time to Get Tough: Making America #1 Again, published in 2011): “It’s the world’s biggest funder of terrorism. Saudi Arabia funnels our petrodollars, our very own money, to fund the terrorists that seek to destroy our people.”

Since his election, Trump has changed his mind, but it is not clear why. Some have suggested that he has realised the importance of Saudi Arabia for oil supplies to the US, or for support to the US dollar. He also wants to show his supporters in the US that he will do international deals that will benefit them in terms of jobs and export earnings – in Saudi Arabia as elsewhere. But it may be that his prime motive is to consolidate Republican support by reversing Barack Obama’s Middle East policy and attacking Iran. Whether that will prove as popular as he hopes remains to be seen. Even Trump’s partisans among the US electorate may expect more of their president than the mere undoing of his predecessor’s achievements.

The folly of Trump’s exaggeratedly pro-Saudi line has already become apparent. Immediately after his May visit to the kingdom, the Saudis took aggressive and unwarranted action against Qatar, cutting land and air links (with support from the United Arab Emirates, Egypt and others). The purpose of this action was supposedly to press Qatar to break links with terrorist organisations, but it also had the aim of muzzling the successful Qatar-based Al Jazeera broadcasting organisation, and forcing the Qataris to abandon their independent foreign policy.

Any politician who runs foreign policy on false premises is riding for a fall, as was shown by the 2003 invasion of Iraq. Political reality has a way of finding false premises out. To accuse Iran and Qatar of supporting terrorism while praising Saudi Arabia is absurd, and the absurdity is apparent to many, not just journalists and academics. If now, as seems to be his intention, Trump forces the rest of the US policymaking establishment to declare Iran in breach of the nuclear deal agreed in 2015, and against all the evidence, that will open yet wider the gap between policy and reality, remove one of the few forces for stability in the troubled Middle East, and bring the US closer to war with Iran.

Even Trump’s electoral supporters will have to notice that reality gap eventually. In those circumstances, will they agree with Trump that unpicking Obama’s political legacy is worth more American lives lost in the Middle East? Even in this strange new world of fake news and small-hours Twitter provocations, one has to hope not.

The British MP and government minister Alistair Burt visited Cairo last week. In an article published in the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram, he said the diversionary tactics the Muslim Brotherhood employed to avoid too much scrutiny of its activities before a British report in 2015 were still going on in 2017.

Burt, the foreign office minister of state for the Middle East, continued: “It is time for anyone who defends the Muslim Brotherhood — in London or Cairo — to put an end to this ambiguity”, like reported by rabnews.com.

This is an important development in the British assessment of the Muslim Brotherhood, and its  opinion on the danger the organisation presents. The 2015 report to which Burt referred was inconclusive and unsatisfactory for those who know the real danger of the Muslim Brotherhood, or those who have suffered from its activities.

The report concluded that the available evidence did not meet the minimum requirement to impose a ban on the organisation. Instead, it opted for strict control of the Brotherhood’s behavior and activities, including tighter vetting of visa applications and monitoring the sources of funding for charities linked with it.

In 2013, Britain was one of the few Western countries to give warning about the Muslim Brotherhood. Since then, as monitoring continued, authorities have banned 110 foreign extremists from entering the UK, and 155 people overseas have been stripped of their British passports so they cannot return. Extremists such as Anjem Chaudhry have been arrested, prosecuted, convicted and imprisoned. Others, such as Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, have been deported.

Burt said in his meetings in Cairo that from monitoring the activities of the Muslim Brotherhood in the UK and around the world, it was clear that the organization used ambiguity to conceal its extremist agenda in Egypt.

When Pope Francis visited Egypt in April, the Brotherhood’s Freedom and Justice Party was described to him as “the door of terrorism.” He was also told that the Brotherhood viewed the Egyptian security personnel assigned to secure him during his visit as “Christian militias.” This was a clear attempt by the Brotherhood to ignite sectarian violence against Christians, and helps to explain  the apparent change in Britain’s position.

I remember when London in the 1990s seemed to be a haven for terrorists whose motives were clear. Britain’s position was strange. Some British politicians and sections of the media even discussed the dangers they were embracing and nurturing. I said at the time that they would pay for this policy of containment, but even I could not have envisioned the horrors that would ensue.

Now is the time to recall the mistakes of the past, and to build on the realities of the new situation. It is a fact that Britain and many other European countries have begun to realize the danger they face, and have begun to take many measures to protect their borders, and their very societies.

This opportunity should be taken advantage of and we should work together to achieve a common goal.
In this regard, the views of John Casson are instructive. Casson, the British ambassador to Cairo for the past three years, is a former deputy ambassador in Jordan and head of the foreign office’s Near East and North Africa department, and one of the UK’s most knowledgeable people on this region.

He met a number of colleagues recently, and talked about a new direction in British policy on its dealings with terrorism and its threat, and a new position on Britain’s view of the Muslim Brotherhood.

In response to a question about whether the status of the Muslim Brotherhood would be reviewed, and whether it would be classified as a terrorist group in Britain, Casson said the UK had laws to ensure “we have all the power to confront those who pose a threat to us, including those who may commit violence. We always want to ensure that we are not complying with the establishment of networks, charities, sites, bank accounts and mosques that support violence and extremism.”

He said the application of these laws related to all groups, including anyone associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, because the UK would not allow and would not tolerate terrorism and extremism, and would face it with full force. “Anyone who publishes poisonous ideas, such as ideas of war between Islam and Britain, or ideas that incite violence, will be dealt with with full force and decisiveness when we find any evidence of a person committing such acts.”

In the east the battle for the city of Raqqa is now into its tenth week with American supported SDF forces doing nearly all the fighting. At this point the SDF has taken nearly two-thirds of the city. For the last month SDF has had to slow down the advance because the fighting is now in the heavily built downtown area and ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant) resistance is more organized and determined, especially in the Old City. Fighting is street by street, block by block because of the many bombs and landmines ISIL has placed in the way, like reported by strategypage.com .

These explosive devices cause 80 percent of the casualties the SDF suffers in the city fighting. ISIL is prepared to make a last stand in the city center where it has built sniper positions and explosive traps (including remotely detonated bombs). This is also where there are more historical sites that are still intact and ISIL knows the attackers will be eager to preserve. SDF leaders warn that the fighting in Raqqa and surrounding areas may last until the end of 2017 because many ISIL men have nowhere to flee and will, like many have done in Iraq, turn into bandits and guerillas to try and survive in the eastern Syria. ISIL has been in the Raqqa area for over three years and established all manner of links with local smugglers and anti-Assad groups.

American Special Forces confirm that SDF has the remaining ISIL forces surrounded and these Kurdish led rebels continue to advance on all sides. The U.S. Special Forces, who have operated with Kurds in Iraq for 25 years and the Syrian Kurds for over five years, also report that the ISIL fighters still in Raqqa are more frequently using civilians (or even wives and children ISIL men) as human shields. This makes it more difficult to call in air strikes when you are trying to avoid civilian casualties. At this point most of the fighting in Syria is taking place in Raqqa and a few other hot spots (Idlib province, Homs and outside Aleppo, the Lebanese border and near the Israeli border.)

The rapid advances against ISIL, especially towards Raqqa are mainly the result of three changes the U.S. made early in 2017. First, local American commanders were given more autonomy to act on their own (in line with objectives agreed on with the U.S. government) and not constantly refer back to political leaders in the U.S. before making many decisions or moves. Next there was a change in the highly restrictive ROE (Rules of Engagement) and the effectiveness of ISIL using human shields against American aircraft. Until early 2017 Russian air attacks since October 2015 have killed more than twice as many civilians as the U.S. led coalition has since August 2014 and that is largely due to a less restrictive ROE. Russia is apparently not deliberately attacking civilians like the Assad aircraft and artillery continue to do. The new American ROE left it up to the local commander or pilot to decide on how to handle human shields. As a result ISIL found the human shields didn’t work very well anymore and began using them less. The local civilians, sometimes families of ISIL fighters, forced to serve as human shields were less frequently seen, often under guard, around key ISIL locations (especially ammo or vehicle storage areas) and hardly ever in the combat zone. The third change was to put a priority on preventing ISIL fighters, especially those from the West, to escape. The new order was surround them if possible and kill them all except for those who surrender.

These changes made the most difference with the SDF, the Kurdish majority rebel group that had been slowly pushing back ISIL forces since early 2016. With the new American strategy the SDF was suddenly getting more equipment (especially armored vehicles), weapons and air support. This came as a shock to the ISIL forces they were fighting because a lot of ISIL tactics didn’t work anymore and the SDF was increasingly effective at overcoming ISIL defenses with little loss to themselves. Just as well because the SDF was the main force fighting ISIL and the only one threatening the ISIL capital in Raqqa city. Now SDF forces are about to drive ISIL out of Raqqa leaving the Assad forces (and their Russian and Iranian allies) the only opposition. Well, there are also the Turks, and Iranian mercenaries.

The rapid advances in the Syrian fighting this year have forced over 800,000 civilians from their homes so far in 2017. Many of these refugees are from Raqqa but most are from areas where the Assad forces are advancing. It is unclear how many civilians are left in Raqqa but it is believed fewer than 10,000 are still in areas controlled by ISIL. More than that are in, or returning to, parts of the city ISIL has recently lost to the SDF rebels.

Turkey Versus Everyone

In the northwest (the Turkish border, north of Aleppo) Turkish troops and YPG Kurds have been massing additional forces to deal with a situation near the town of Afrin. The Turkish troops in Syria, and their FSA allies, have been trying to force Kurdish fighters out of Afrin for over a year but have so far failed. This area has been frequently fought over since 2013. Those battles involved al Nusra and ISIL forces as well as the Syrian Army and FSA (secular) and U.S. supported SDF rebels. Now the Turks are involved and have become a major supporters of the FSA rebels in the area. This has led to some clashes between FSA and SDF forces. There have been clashes between the YPG (the Kurdish separatist component of SDF) and FSA rebels in the past, even though both groups have long been supported by the Americans. These hostilities were basically the outgrowth of personal disputes between leaders of some YPG and FSA groups. The U.S. sees the Turkish attitude here (that all armed Kurds must disband and disarm) of being more about domestic Turkish politics (where an unpopular pro-Islamic government is trying to create an external threat to distract Turks from the dislike for their own government). As a result of the recent incidents the Americans announced they would not require Syrian Kurds, especially the YPG, to return American weapons once ISIL was defeated. The U.S. had earlier said it would get the weapons, as a gesture to the Turks. But now the Americans see Turkish hostility towards the Syrian Kurds as having nothing to do with reality and actually hurting the campaign against ISIL (which Turkey wants destroyed) and the Assads (which the Turks are less hostile towards). To further complicate matters the Russians have moved forces to the vicinity of Afrin in support of the SDF.

Assad Forces Move East

Much of central and eastern Syria is thinly populated and controlled by whoever rules the few roads. In west central Syria (Homs province) Assad forces have captured most of the province but are having problems eliminating the few remaining ISIL strongholds. East of Homs in Deir Ezzor province Assad forces have made regular progress to reach the provincial capital (also called Deir Ezzor) that is southeast of Raqqa. ISIL continues to surround the city of Deir Ezzor (also called al Zour), which has been under siege by the Islamic terrorists since 2014. Syrian forces were largely absent from Deir Ezzor province until March 2016 when Syrian troops retook Palmyra, held by ISIL since May 2015. Palmyra was a major ISIL victory but since early 2016 Russian air and ground forces have worked with Syrian troops to methodically fight their way back to Palmyra and Deir Ezzor province in general. At that time ISIL controlled most of Deir Ezzor province, including Palmyra, which is astride the main road from Deir Ezzor to Damascus (the national capital and Assad stronghold). Supporting government forces in Deir Ezzor became more difficult with the loss of Palmyra in mid-2015 and the Russian troops arrived just in time. Syrian troops have been fighting ISIL in Deir Ezzor province ever since in preparation for an advance on the ISIL capital of Raqqa (227 kilometers to the northwest). The city of Deir Ezzor is halfway between the ISIL capital Raqqa and ISIL controlled (until recently) areas of Iraq. The Assad forces seem in no hurry to drive ISIL away from the city of Deir Ezzor. The Assads are confident that their Russian and Iranian allies will forced the SDF to turn Raqqa over to the “legitimate government of Syria” (the Assads) once ISIL has been cleared out. There is some truth to that but the SDF expects some concessions from the Assads (like recognition of an autonomous Kurd region in the northeast).

The Triad Of Confusion

Russia, Iran and Turkey want to keep the Assads in power and develop better relations with the each other. Evidence of this strategy can be seen in the Russian monitored “neutral zone” in southern Syria, along the Jordanian and Israeli borders. Since established on July 7^th this zone is apparently working and was initially monitored by 400 Russian military police. Russia has since moved in more (now four) battalions of military police, many of them within sight of people on both sides of the Syrian border with Israel and Jordan. The problem is Iran and most Islamic terrorists, especially al Qaeda and ISIL have not agreed to observe the neutral zone. That results in some violence, mostly from ISIL. The other Islamic terror groups are willing to unofficially observe the ceasefire.

To deal with the remaining ISIL threat (and any new Iranian ones) Israel made it clear that it was not bound by the neutral zone rules either. Yet since this neutral zone was declared Iran has behaved. This has something to do with Russian refusal to act against the increasingly loud and frequent Israeli reminders that their air force will attack any Iranian attempt to set up operations near the Israeli border. This is just the beginning of a long-term struggle for who will control what in Syria. Meanwhile further west in Lebanon Iranian controlled Hezbollah is more active on the Israeli border, even if some of these moves violate the UN agreement that ended the 2006 war between Hezbollah and Israel.

Once ISIL is gone as a major threat, perhaps by the end of 2017, the only thing left to fight over is how much of Syria will a post-war Syrian government control. Turkey wants to control most of the northern border, as least the parts that border Turkey. The control is currently disputed by the Syrian Kurds, who want to control northeastern Syria (their ancestral homeland) and at least have access to the rest of the northern border, if not control of smaller border areas that were traditionally mostly Kurdish. Iran wants free access to southern Syria, especially the main roads from Iraq to southern Lebanon and areas along the Israeli border. Russia has a lease on a naval base on the Syrian coast and wants to hold onto that. Some of these demands contradict others.

Israel is openly hostile to a permanent Iranian presence in Syria and Turkey quietly agrees with that. Russia agrees more openly and Israel keeps trying to improve relations with the unstable Turkish Islamic government. The only thing that makes Russia, Iran and Turkey allies is their desire for the Assads to stay in power and keep Syria free of Islamic terrorists and Kurdish separatists. Turkey, Iran and Russia back the Assads directly (with personnel and weapons) and coordinate their military operations to help the Assads survive. The Sunni Arab states want the Assads gone and are more open in opposing Iranian plans for post-war Syria. Despite opposition from Israel, the Arabs, the Americans and even Iranian allies Iran is determined to have a land route from Iran to Lebanon and military installations in post-war Syria. Israel has made it clear that it will, and can, make sure that does not happen. Turkey and Russia recognize that Israel is not only the stronger military power here but also has the most at stake. For decades Iran has called for the destruction of Israel and that does not sit well with Turkey and Russia because both nations have had clashes with aggressive Iranian ambitions over the past few centuries.

So far Iran seems to be replacing ISIL as the major disruptive force in Syria and major source of Islamic terror violence. What makes Iran particularly scary is their proven ability to mobilize effective and loyal forces wherever they establish a presence. They even have a branch of their military, the Quds Force, dedicated to that. The best example is the Hezbollah Shia Arab militia in Lebanon. Now here are similar militias in Iraq and even one largely composed of Afghans operating only in Syria (so far). Back in Afghanistan politicians are complaining about the number of Afghans hired by Iran to fight in Syria and, it is feared, eventually other parts of the world.

Since 2012 Iran has offered Afghan Shia refugees in Iran the opportunity to join an Iranian sponsored mercenary force in Syria. Iran was trying to keep the Syrian government in power against an uprising by the majority of Syrians (who are Sunni). The Shia minority has ruled Syria for over 40 years and since the 1980s done so with the financial and material support of Iran. After 2012 that support included more and more foreign Shia fighters recruited, trained (usually in only a few weeks), paid and led by Iranians. The key benefit for Afghan volunteers from Iran was that successful service (especially if killed or disabled) provided the volunteer and his family with permanent residency in Iran. Some 20,000 Afghans from Iran have volunteered so far and some 20 percent have been killed or wounded. Despite the losses, Afghans kept volunteering because the payoff was relatively large and real.

The Iranians kept their end of the bargain. But some of the Afghan volunteers did desert and provided foreign journalists and intel analysts with details of how the system worked. For one thing Iranian recruiters stressed the religious angle and the need to protect fellow Shia in Syria. The reality was that Iran needed tough and fearless fighters to deal with Sunni Islamic terrorist groups (mostly al Qaeda and ISIL) who comprised most of the opposition. These Sunni fanatics were responsible for numerous (and ongoing) attacks on Afghan Shia back in Iran. Afghanistan and Pakistan and that was sufficient motivation for most of the Afghan volunteers who come from a warrior culture. In addition to keeping their end of the deal Iran has recently (since late 2016) been providing the Afghan volunteers more public praise in the Iranian media. Most of the Afghans killed in Syria are flown home for burial in Iran and photos or video of the funerals often show up in the media. The families of the “martyrs” are praised as well and often shown receiving their residency papers and other benefits as well (access to better housing, medical care and so on). All this angers many Afghans who see it as another Iranian scheme to exploit Afghanistan. It is, but the Afghan refugees keep volunteering.

August 13, 2017: Outside Damascus rebels used explosives in a tunnel to kill at least twenty soldiers.

August 12, 2017: In the east the SDF now control half the city of Raqqa and the SDF forces advancing from the east and the west have linked up and largely surrounded ISIL held areas.

In the central Syria (Homs province) the Assad forces took advantage of their air power (mostly Russian) and the fact that most of Homs is thinly populated desert to raid an isolated ISIL position. The raid involved air strikes quickly followed by Syrian troops landing by helicopter. At least 31 died (25 Islamic terrorists and six soldiers). Many more ISIL men were captured (often because they were wounded). This raid was apparently for the purpose of taking prisoners and capture documents. It also boosts morale among the Assad forces and further demoralizes the rebels in general and ISIL in particular.

Over the last month Hezbollah forces fighting on both sides of the Syrian-Lebanon border killed or chased away several hundred Syrian al Qaeda rebels and destroyed the camps and fortifications these Syrian rebels had used since 2012. In the end many of the remaining al Qaeda gunmen agreed to voluntarily leave with their families. This was part of an effort to force nearly 10,000 Islamic terrorists (both ISIL and al Qaeda) from illegal camps they and their families have established on the Lebanese side of the border. So far about 80 percent of these illegals have been forced or persuaded to leave Lebanon.

August 11, 2017: In the south, on the Jordan border, an ISIL suicide bomber attacked a camp used by Jaish al Islam, a rival rebel group backed by Saudi Arabia. This attacked killed 23 rebels and wounded more than 30 and was part of an effort to gain control of the Nasib border crossing.

August 10, 2017: In the south Syrian army and Iranian mercenaries (Hezbollah) forces seized control of 30 kilometers of the Jordan border. This gives the Assads control of the entire Jordan border of Sweida province (one of the four that border Jordan). Sweida province was not included in the ceasefire zone the U.S. and Russia agreed on in early July.

August 9, 2017: In eastern Syria an Iranian Quds force advisor, captured near the Iraqi border two days ago, was beheaded by ISIL and video of the event put on the Internet. Iran vowed revenge.

August 5, 2017: In the central Syria (Homs province) the army captured Al Sukhna, the last large town controlled by ISIL in the province. This came after a two week battle in the town itself. The fighting has been slow as Al Sukhna is only 50 kilometers southeast of Palmyra which ISIL lost in March.

August 3, 2017: In Turkey the government has replaced the senior leadership of the army, navy and air force. Since mid-2016 the government has fired or forced to retire more than half the generals and admirals. The government feared that many of these officers would not follow orders. That is still a risk because the Turkish leaders want their armed forces to prepare for an attack on the Syrian SDF forces. That would include the hundreds of American troops who advise and operate with the SDF. This could cause fighting with the United States, a fellow NATO member. The SDF is considering an alliance with the Assads should it come to war with the Turks. Stranger things have happened in this part of the world because if there is one thing the Syrian Kurds and Syrian Arabs can agree on is that Turks in Syria are definitely not welcome. Several centuries of Turkish rule led to that attitude.

Meanwhile the U.S. is openly criticizing the Turkish attitude and denying Turkish accusations that the Americans are aiding the SDF even though everyone (at least the current Turk government) knows SDF contains a large contingent of Kurdish separatists who want to attack Turkey.

August 2, 2017: In the south four mortar shells were fired at the Russian embassy compound in Damascus. Two shells fell within the embassy compound and exploded causing some material damage. The other two shells landed outside the compound. No one was injured. These embassy attacks have happened regularly, sometimes monthly, since 2011. At this time there are still some rebels within mortar range of this part of Damascus and that apparently accounts for the continued attacks.

July 30, 2017: In Kurdish controlled areas of northern Syria the Kurds announced January elections for local governments. The Turks oppose this sort of thing.

July 26, 2017: Satellite photos show Russia has replaced a dozen of the older warplanes at its Hmeymin airbase, Most of the 20 or so aircraft there are now Su-34, Su-35 and Su-30SM, which are built to mainly deliver smart bombs and guided missiles. For over a year Russia was using older warplanes that could only deliver unguided bombs because Russia had quickly exhausted its supply of smart bombs by early 2016. The more modern warplanes are also more effective at air-to-air combat. Hmeymin is outside the port city of Latakia and defended by Russia’s most modern air defense system (the S-400). Russia recently signed a 49 year lease with the Assads for the use of Hmeymin airbase. The lease can be extended for 25 years at a time after the initial 49 years. Russia is also upgrading its military port facilities in the Syrian port of Tartus to that of a permanent naval base.

July 25, 2017: In the northeast (Hasakah province) Turkish forces discovered another tunnel built under the border by smugglers. This has become common since the Turks increased security along the Syrian border. The Turks blame the Kurds for the tunnels but in Hasakah the smugglers have to make deals with the Kurds who control most of the province. Naturally the Kurds use the tunnel to move people or equipment (like weapons) they cannot get past Turkish border security. The tunnels tend to be deep (6-10 meters) and long (300 0r more meters) and thus expensive to build and maintain. But like such tunnels everywhere the tunnel owners have to take that into account when putting up the cash to build and maintain a tunnel and charge customers accordingly. Tunnel owners try to make friends (local gangs or officials who can be bribed) on both sides but at this time Turkish politics is in turmoil and it is difficult to know who you can trust. At the moment the Turks have a real concern about PKK using the tunnels to move people and explosives needed for terror attacks inside Turkey.

As the Islamic State (IS) group continues to lose ground in Iraq and Syria and news of apparently IS inspired or facilitated attacks on European soil grows depressingly familiar, the question of what IS might do next is a pertinent one, like reported by middleeasteye.net.

The group’s attempt to use Libya as the vanguard of its so-called “caliphate” has faltered with the decline of IS’s territorial control in the country. Yet with thousands of Tunisian and other North African IS fighters potentially looking to return home in the near future, the group’s ambitions to bolster its presence within North Africa are far from dead.

In early 2016, the Libyan city of Sirte was on the verge of becoming IS’s de facto capital outside of Iraq and Syria. However, an offensive against IS launched in May 2016 by forces aligned to Libya’s UN-backed Government of National Accord (GNA) and supported by US air strikes, eradicated the group’s presence in the city within eight months.

Many of IS’s fighters evacuated Sirte prior to its defeat and have scattered themselves in the surrounding area and throughout Libya. Operating as small cells, they retain the capability to attack local authorities and may damage the country’s volatile economy by targeting oil infrastructure.

Dangerous liaison: The Libya-Tunisia connection

IS fighters who fled Sirte could also cross the border into neighbouring Tunisia and join fellow affiliates attempting to establish themselves there.

The border city of Sabratha in western Libya, 60 miles from the Tunisian border, is known as a hotspot for militant activity and focal point for facilitating smuggling between the two countries. The city once contained an IS training camp in its Qasr Tahil district. This camp trained Noureddine Chouchane, one of the Tunisians blamed for the attack on the Sousse beach resort and Tunis museum in 2015.

Despite a US air strike on the training camp in February 2016, the group’s presence in and around Sabratha has not disappeared, forcing the city’s municipal council to establish a new security force dubbed the ‘anti-IS Operation Room’ to police the region. This move is a product of Libya’s ongoing political crisis and economic decline, where three governments, two parliaments, and a plethora of armed militias fight and jostle for power, despite ongoing political rapprochement efforts.

It is this lack of governance that provides a window for IS to regroup in certain areas of Libya, despite its territorial defeat. As such, IS’s ability to linger in the area around Sabratha provides an avenue for its members to travel between Libya and Tunisia.

There are strong ties between IS fighters in Tunisia and Libya, both organisationally and at an individual level. Militants from Tunisia and Libya have fought side by side across the globe since the 1980s, and were involved with IS founder Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s networks throughout the Levant.

Tunisia is the largest single source of foreign militants fighting with IS, with as many as 6,000 Tunisian individuals fighting for the group globally. As the caliphate collapses in the Levant, many of these foreign fighters will attempt to return home to Tunisia and are likely to join up with cells sympathetic to their cause.

Many Tunisians also travelled to Libya from 2014 onwards to join the caliphate there. On 13 July, Tunisia’s Ministry of Interior issued a warrant for Hassen Dhaouadi, a suspected IS recruiter from Matier, Bizerte. Two years earlier, Libya’s Special Deterrence Force (Rada), a powerful, predominately Salafist militia based in Tripoli, reportedly arrested and held Dhaouadi. Dhaouadi, like many IS fighters in North Africa, ventured to Libya to help consolidate the group’s presence in the region but has now returned home.

Future IS vanguard in North Africa?

Tunisia provides fertile ground for an impending IS presence. IS cells are already developing their capabilities, undertaking a few deadly terrorist attacks as well as lower level insurgent strikes on Tunisian security forces. Cells sympathetic to IS are active in 17 of Tunisia’s 24 governorates that includes Sfax and Sousse on the east coast, Jendouba closer towards the Algerian border, and the capital Tunis in the north.

The group has undertaken over half a dozen attacks in the last six months and recently claimed an IED attack against a Tunisian army armoured vehicle in Jabel Mghilla. Greater coordinated activity and experience, provided by an influx of IS members from Libya and the Levant, could prove a significant threat to Tunisia’s security.

IS has been successful in appealing to those who feel marginalised and oppressed by their government and there is an opportunity for the group to gain support by exploiting civilian dissatisfaction brewing in Tunisia. Civil unrest due to institutional corruption and new repressive security measures provide plenty of fuel for IS propaganda. The slated passing of the ‘Protection of Security Forces Act’ would provide security forces with greater freedom to employ deadly force and contains a provision criminalising ‘denigration’ of security forces.

Human right groups have stated the bill is “inconsistent with international human rights standards and the rights guaranteed in the Tunisian Constitution,” arguing it undermines the freedom of expression and could see journalists, whistleblowers, and critics of the security forces penalised. Fewer opportunities to express grievances and harsher security reforms may help push those already teetering on the edge of extremism into the arms of IS.

The loss of the city of Sirte is not the final blow to IS in Libya or the North African region. The opportunity for IS to regroup and strategically pursue its goals of causing regional instability are still available. If unchecked, the group could mount a resurgence in the region, undermining the military gains against the organisation over the last twelve months.

When NATO launched Operation Unified Protector against the Libyan regime in 2011, the alliance received support from its own member Turkey, as well as two Arab monarchies of the Persian Gulf: Qatar and the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The Qatari and Emirati militaries directly intervened on the side of anti-Qaddafi revolutionaries.

Yet these three U.S. allies’ agendas quickly diverged, with Turkey, Qatar, the UAE, and other Sunni Muslim states—Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan—seeking to shape Libya’s future in fundamentally different directions, like reported by lobelog.com.

Today, Libya is home to several proxy wars waged by regional states with high stakes in the Maghrebi country’s future. On one side, Qatar, Turkey, and Sudan officially support Libya’s internationally recognized Government of National Accord (GNA), based in Tripoli and led by Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj. The GNA is fragile and maintains varying degrees of loyalty from—while wielding minimal control over—a loose coalition of militias, including Islamist groups that have been receiving support from Doha since 2011. On the other side, Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE back Libya’s secular-leaning parliament in Tobruk, headed by Abdullah al-Thinni and supported by the Libyan National Army (LNA), led by General Khalifa Haftar.

A Dispute Over Political Islam

Supporting Libya’s Islamist factions offered both Ankara and Doha the means to extend their influence across a large, oil-rich Mediterranean country. These two states pinned their hopes on the Muslim Brotherhood’s ascendancy following Libya’s chaotic political opening in 2011. On the opposite end of the ideological spectrum, the UAE saw the rise of Islamist forces in post-Qaddafi Libya as an unacceptable danger to the fundamental interests of Arab governments and societies, as well as to regional security. A host of other Middle Eastern governments shared Abu Dhabi’s perception.

The ongoing Qatari diplomatic crisis shows that longstanding divisiveness in the region over the question of political Islam persists. Libya has become one focal point in this battle for the future of the Arab world. On June 5, the Tobruk parliament, known as the House of Representatives (HoR), joined the “quartet”—Bahrain, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE—in cutting off relations with Qatar based on the allegation that the Arabian emirate has been “harboring terrorism.” Shortly before that move, Haftar directly accused Doha of supporting terrorist groups that have wreaked havoc across Libya.

Tobruk’s decision to back the quartet against Qatar was unsurprising, given that Qatari support is helping Libyan Islamist forces resist Haftar’s efforts to defeat them. Bunyan al-Marsous, a Qatari-backed coalition of mainly Islamist armed groups from Misrata, has been battling the LNA in recent months for control of Jufra. Earlier this month, a delegation representing the coalition went to Doha and met with Qatar’s Minister of Defense. Bunyan al-Marsous’ spokesperson, Mohammed Al-Ghasri, expressed “the Libyan people’s thanks to Qatar for its efforts in the fight against [Islamic State] terrorists.”

Tobruk officials frequently point their fingers at Qatar amid the LNA’s ongoing battle to prevent Muslim Brotherhood figures and other Islamists, which quartet members designate as terrorists, from gaining power. By supporting the Saudi/UAE-led bloc, Haftar hopes to gain stronger military and economic support from the GCC states and from neighboring Egypt. He needs that aid if he hopes to someday seize power in Tripoli and reunify the country under his rule.

Qatar’s Role

Two months ago, the quartet issued a “terrorist list” made up of 59 individuals and 12 entities. Five of the individuals and one of the entities came from Libya. The following month, the same four Arab governments issued another list that included two alleged terrorist individuals and six groups based in Libya. Given that some of these designated terrorists, such as al-Sadiq Abd al-Rahman Ali al-Ghiryani, are militantly anti-Haftar, it is easy to understand why Tobruk joined the quartet in severing ties with Doha. From Tobruk’s perspective, the move was long overdue.

Opposition among Libyans to Qatar’s foreign policy fits into an ideological context. Officials in Tobruk and their secular supporters in Libya have grievances over Qatar’s role in empowering Islamists across the beleaguered North Africa country since the anti-Qaddafi revolution. Although in actuality Doha’s foreign policy in Libya since 2011 has been more nuanced, the perception of the emirate as a patron of violent extremism in Libya has been widespread. Since shortly after the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya’s fall there have been scenes of the country’s citizens burning Qatari flags and, on at least one occasion, an effigy of Qatar`s former Emir Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, to display their anger toward Doha.

Haftar and the HoR officials also identify Turkey and Sudan as bearing responsibility for radical terrorist groups’ ascendancy in Libya. Notably, last month the HoR, which has accused the Sudanese regime of arming militants in Libya, closed Khartoum’s Consulate in Kofra near the Libyan-Sudanese border, citing Khartoum’s alleged human trafficking activities in Eastern Libya. Officials in Khartoum have accused the HoR of sponsoring rebels and mercenaries from Darfur, and Sudan has formally recognized Libya’s Tripoli-based Government of National Accord as the North African country’s legitimate ruling entity. These dynamics in are adding to instability in the region amid the Qatar crisis.

Backing Haftar

Emirati and Egyptian leaders view Haftar as the Libyan figure most capable of defeating the Qatar-backed Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamist groups seen by the quartet as terrorists. The former Qaddafi regime official, frequently labeled the “renegade general,” is undoubtedly the most influential political figure in Libya today. His LNA maintains control of much of eastern Libya, large parts of southern Libya, and strategic ports and oil fields along the Mediterranean coast and in the Sirte Basin. Cairo and Abu Dhabi have offered substantial support to the LNA as financial backers, diplomatic/political sponsors, and military allies. Since August 2014, both the UAE and Egypt have intervened militarily in support of Haftar’s forces, with the former having established a forward operating base in Al-Khadim Airport in Marj province, from where the LNA and its allies have launched attacks against their Islamist enemies.

The high-stakes competition in Libya unfolds amid a grander struggle between Turkey and the UAE for influence in Africa and the Persian Gulf. Ankara has established a military training base in Mogadishu, Somalia, and is deepening its relations with the Sudanese regime. Turkey’s plans in Africa challenge the Emiratis, who have established military bases in Berbera, Somaliland, and Eritrea’s port city of Assab not only as part of the Saudi/UAE-led military coalition’s intervention in Yemen, but also as part of Abu Dhabi’s quest to assert a more dominant foreign policy in the continent. The joint Turkish-Qatari base in Qatar has been a major source of unease for officials in Abu Dhabi as they do not welcome the military presence in the GCC of any state, like Turkey, that backs the Muslim Brotherhood.

Libya’s strategic location and oil wealth mean that the international community has a lot to lose should it fall into the hands of extremist groups. Islamic State’s previous takeovers of Derna and Sirte highlighted the failed North African state’s vulnerability. None of the regional states have any interest in seeing menacing terrorist organizations usurp more control and ideological influence in the bifurcated country. Yet rather than uniting to counter internationally recognized terrorist groups, the Sunni Muslim states that have intervened in Libya’s civil war are battling each other instead with one of these governments patronizing a group deemed a terrorist organization by another. Tragically, the intensification of these proxy wars will only further dim the prospects for peace between Libya’s two power centers in Tripoli and Tobruk as well as a host of countless armed groups across the country.

A key plank of US President Donald Trump’s new strategy to turn around the 16-year conflict in Afghanistan will probably falter for a reason few of his voters would realise: China.

On Monday (Aug 21), Mr Trump outlined an open-ended commitment to the conflict in Afghanistan that pledged more troops and diplomatic outreach to the Taliban. Importantly, Mr Trump publicly tried to pressure Pakistan to end safe havens for terrorists who are striking at Afghanistan, like reported by straitstimes.com.

A day later, US Secretary of State Rex Tillerson followed up Mr Trump’s comments, adding that Pakistan “must adopt a different approach”. But this aspect of the Afghan strategy is likely to founder because of China’s increasingly close economic ties with Pakistan, which reduces American leverage.

With more than US$50 billion (S$68 billion) in planned infrastructure projects and strong diplomatic support for its positions, American threats to withdraw billions in military aid are becoming less worrying for the powerful army, which dominates foreign policy.

With China’s role increasing, Pakistan’s forces have fewer incentives to stop covertly supporting insurgent groups that strike inside Afghanistan and arch-rival India, while targeting outfits that threaten its own domestic security.

“China is the shield now behind which Pakistan can be expected to continue to play its double game,” said international relations professor Harsh Pant at King’s College London. “The more aid America will cut, Pakistan will be expecting China to fill the vacuum.”

Pakistan has long denied it harbours terrorists. But despite rising frustration from US lawmakers over designated terrorist groups such as the Haqqani Network – who strike Afghanistan allegedly from inside Pakistan – China’s support for its ally means Pakistan does not need to alter course.

In the last four fiscal years, China has directly invested US$2.8 billion in Pakistan compared with the US$533 million inflows from the US, according to Pakistan’s central bank.

Chinese banks have also helped Pakistan plug its widening deficits. Pakistan received  US$848 million in loans from China in the six months through December 2016 to finance the country’s “growing current account gap”, according to the central bank.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry released a defiant statement after Mr Trump’s speech saying China’s Foreign Minister Wang Yi “lauded Pakistan’s contributions and great sacrifices made in the fight against terrorism” and the “international community should fully recognise these efforts”.

Later that evening, the foreign ministry released another statement calling Mr Trump’s comments part of a “false narrative”. It also said Mr Trump’s strategy will likely fail as US military action has not brought peace to Afghanistan in 16 years and probably won’t “in the future”.

“China is at the moment supporting and helping Pakistan’s economic development and neutralising part of the American argument” pressuring Islamabad, said political analyst Hasan Askari Rizvi, who is based in Lahore.

Amounts paid out to Pakistan under a US coalition support fund have fallen 62 per cent from US$1.44 billion in 2013, with hundreds of millions blocked in the past year as American officials said Pakistan was not doing enough to root out groups like the Haqqanis.

Threats to withdraw US military aid entirely are not going to have much impact, since the US needs Pakistan for its broader efforts in South Asia, Mr Rizvi said. Even if Washington chooses to get tough on Islamabad, “Pakistan can survive even without any American assistance”.

On Wednesday, Pakistan’s army chief Qamar Javed Bajwa told US Ambassador David Hale that the military is not looking for funding, but wants recognition of its contribution in the fight against terrorism. At the same time, Pakistan’s government stressed it does not want to alienate the US.

We won’t “turn our back on the rest of the world on the back of Chinese support”, said Mr Miftah Ismail, an economic adviser to Prime Minister Shahid Khaqan Abbasi. “We want to be friends with every country and America has a role to play.”

Some hope China might use its clout to end regional instability. In an interview this month, Afghanistan’s ambassador to Pakistan Omar Zakhilwal said he hopes Beijing will use its influence to push for a permanent peace deal.

“China could only be genuinely interested in peace in Afghanistan for its investments in Pakistan,” Mr Zakhilwal said. “Instability in any of these countries does not serve China’s interest.”

And China has huge interests in Pakistan. The China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC) projects form the cornerstone of Chinese President Xi Jinping’s Belt and Road Initiative. And the Chinese funded port of Gwadar gives Beijing a deep sea port in the Arabian Sea, close to mutual rival India – with whom China is currently engaged in a Himalayan border dispute.

There are also about 20,000 Chinese workers in Pakistan, double the number two years ago, and Pakistan’s military is firmly behind CPEC, said one senior Chinese official, who asked not to be named as they are not authorised to speak to the media.

“Pakistan’s pivot towards China, particularly under the CPEC initiative, has been clear for some time,” said senior economist Bilal Khan at Standard Chartered in Karachi. “It remains unclear what the future US-Pakistan economic relationship could look like.”

After being spurned by Mr Trump’s criticism, Pakistan is even less likely to agree to a US-directed policy, even if it is accompanied by threats.

“It’s nothing new for US leaders to vow to get Pakistan to change its ways,” said Mr Michael Kugelman, a senior associate for South Asia at the Washington-based Woodrow Wilson Centre. “What remains to be seen is how Trump intends to compel Pakistan to alter its behaviour.”

He added: “In all likelihood, Pakistan is unlikely to change its ways regardless of what threat or punishment Trump comes out with.”

The civil war that has been raging in Libya since 2011 is, in many ways, a proxy war pitting Qatar and its Muslim Brotherhood allies against the United Arab Emirates (UAE) and Saudi Arabia, like reported by qantara.de.

The Qatari-Emirati rivalry, which became front page news earlier this year when Saudia Arabia and its allies severed diplomatic ties with Qatar, has been the significant factor in the continuation of the current Libyan civil war, much more so than nationalistic or Islamist ideologies.

Qatar and the UAE are both punching above their weight in the conflict because, unlike in Yemen or Syria, the role of the United States or other major powers is somewhat muted.

At stake for both Gulf monarchies is influence in post-war Libya as well as economic opportunity. The country is home to some of the last significant under-explored oil and gas basins in the Middle East. Outside the oil sector Qatar has financial deals with Libya that date back to the Gaddafi era. The Emirates have also sought controlling positions in the Libyan financial sector and were also early investors in the country.

Chaos of the three coalitions

After disputed elections in 2014, Libya has once again descended into chaos with numerous factions. These include Berber militias, IS terrorists, repentant former members of Gaddafi′s military and many other factions. Over the last three years, however, Libyan politics have been defined by three large coalitions, each claiming to be Libya′s legitimate government.

The General National Congress is largely Muslim Brotherhood-influenced and is supported by Qatar. Conversely, the UAE along with Saudi Arabia now support General Khalifa Haftar and his Libyan National Army (LNA). The LNA claims to represent Libya′s House of Representatives, a rival government based in Tobruk.

Both of the above factions pay lip service to the Government of National Accord, the body recognised by the United Nations as Libya′s legitimate government. Yet both sides also have other allies too. Egypt also supports Haftar and in the past the General National Congress has received support from Turkey.

Qatar has long been involved in Libyan politics and had ties to the Islamist opposition since the Gaddafi era. When the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011 began, it supported the Muslim Brotherhood, which was the best organised political force in several Arab states.

Qatar was the first country to recognise the Libyan rebels and had begun sending them arms early in 2011 as they fought to topple Gaddafi. Media reports also suggest that Qatari special forces were deployed to Libya and at least some Libyan rebels received military training in Qatar.

The Emirates also sent weapons to rebel groups early in the conflict but, failed to build lasting ties. Instead the Emirates turned to General Haftar, a supposed former CIA asset who as recently as 2011 was living in exile in Northern Virginia.

In May 2014, Haftar launched a military movement to create a unified Libyan National Army (LNA) and to eliminate Islamic extremists (Haftar′s definition of extremists includes many whom others would consider moderates). This moment set in stone the Qatari-UAE rivalry, each has now officially backed clearly opposing sides in the Libyan armed conflict. A month later Bahrain, UAE and Saudi Arabia pulled their ambassadors from Qatar′s capital Doha, the diplomats did not return for eight months.

Haftar is perhaps the ablest military commander Libya has ever produced. He makes little secret of his neo-Gaddafi ambition to rule the country.  Personality traits aside, his rapid rise has been accelerated by Egyptian and Emirati airstrikes in support of the LNA.

At first, the two countries kept their role secret due to U.S. disapproval. But, following a massacre of Coptic Christians in February 2015, Egypt publicly launched airstrikes against Islamist militants in Libya. The Qatari supported New General National Congress called Egypt′s airstrikes a “horrible assault.” Al Jazeera coverage highlighted the civilian casualties of the strike.

The continual airstrikes increasingly suggest an escalation of the conflict in a conventional sense. A once semi-secret activity is now being conducted in the open.

Qatar did not respond militarily to support its clients. Even if it wanted to, Libya is beyond the operational range of Qatari aircraft. Even the 24 longer-ranged Dassault Rafale fighter jets Qatar has ordered from France could not attack Libya without access to access to friendly airbases or mid-air refuelling.

In any case, diplomatic relations soon returned to normal in the GCC and on the surface Gulf politics seemed calm, with Qatar even joining the Saudi-led military intervention in Yemen.

So much shifting sand

However, in Libya, tensions between the two countries continued unabated with the Emirates and Egypt increasing their military support to Haftar in recent months.

This was apparent in the most recent Egyptian bombing campaign in Libya. Though it used the May 26 attack on Coptic Christians as a pretext, the Egyptian government acknowledged its new bombing campaign was not aimed at the perpetrators of that attack per se. Instead the Derna Mujahideen Shura Council, an Islamist group, bore the brunt of the campaign. The group was an impediment to Haftar′s efforts to consolidate control of the country and according to Arab press reports, the group has also received support from Qatar.Still isolated and with little options, Libya may prove one place where Qatar chooses to strike back at the UAE.

The shifting sands of Libyan politics mean that Haftar could easily find himself on the defensive.  Haftar′s LNA is not a modern army, but a coalition of militias whose allegiances could quickly change. Haftar′s weakness is Qatar′s strength. Qatar can magnify the scale of its financial involvement with its proxies and provide them with public relations support though its media outlets, especially Al Jazeera.

Either way it suggests that the war in Libya is likely to be a long one.

As Westerners continue to watch events in Syria and Yemen, they should pay more attention to events in Libya where Gulf tensions may most likely lead from civil war into war.

President Donald Trump has announced the results of his “comprehensive review” of U.S. strategic options in Afghanistan and South Asia and – as many have already noted – they are uninspiring. Sixteen years of war leads to bouts of soul-searching, but it seems we aren’t obliged to turn up any new thinking in the search, like reported by warontherocks.com.

Any Afghanistan policy review is necessarily a Pakistan policy review. This is simply because, as many experts and even the president has realized, Afghanistan is not “solvable” absent some dramatic change in Pakistani behavior. Jeff Smith, for example, concludes that unless this current review “starts and ends with a decisive change in our Pakistan policy, it will produce the same outcome as every Afghan strategy before it.”

The logic that a change of Pakistani strategy is a necessary condition for any prospect of Afghan success is fairly simple. A 2010 study by the RAND Corporation examined 30 counter-insurgency campaigns and found none were successful so long as there was significant cross-border insurgent support. And, for years now, the U.S. government has concluded that Pakistan provides a safe haven for, among others, the Afghan Taliban and the Haqqani network as they engage in violent operations in Afghanistan. Some believe that in addition to providing operational space for insurgent groups to train, fundraise, and escape pressure, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies may directly provide weapons and money to these groups.

This basic linkage between Pakistani behavior and Afghan outcomes did not suddenly dawn on the Washington policy community this year. This is at least the third U.S. attempt to induce Pakistani policy change. The George W. Bush administration tried strategic love and affection to overcome deep-felt Pakistani insecurities exacerbated by its episodic “abandonment” by the United States. They attempted to convince Pakistan that this time the partnership would endure, and from this foundation permit Pakistan to reorient its grand strategy away from confrontation with India and toward normalcy. That failed.

Initially, the Obama administration approach could be characterized as more of the same. It supported a massive, multiyear aid program in 2009. But following the troubles of 2011, most notably the raid on Abbottabad that killed Osama bin Laden, the relationship never fully recovered. Whitney Kassel and Philip Reiner, who both worked on Pakistan policy for the Obama administration, conclude in a recent article that U.S. strategy ultimately devolved into “a quiet tolerance of the country’s double dealing.”

Now we have Trump’s try for a different outcome. Prior to the strategic review, Trump appears to have thought very little about Pakistan, as indicated by his pre-inauguration telephone call with Pakistan’s now former prime minister. Trump’s ideological malleability makes him unpredictable, but he does appear to have a “base impulse” that the United States is being taken advantage of by international actors and consequently the world is laughing at us — something that he wants to rectify (or at least be seen as doing so). How this instinct responds to Pakistani behavior has been the great question of America’s South Asia policy, simply because Pakistan has been taking advantage of the United States. To remove the moral connotations of that statement, Pakistan has been collecting geopolitical rents. The question is whether there is a better deal to be had.

On Monday, Trump suggested he would find one:

We have been paying Pakistan billions and billions of dollars at the same time they are housing the very terrorists that we are fighting.  But that will have to change, and that will change immediately.

The president is not wrong on the history, but that is precisely where the limits of U.S. influence become evident. The United States has provided in excess of $33 billion to Pakistan since 9/11. In exchange, Washington receives a schizophrenic partner on counter-terrorism, one that is intermittently aggressive in confronting groups targeting the Pakistani state (most notably the Tehrek-e-Taliban Pakistan), helpful against groups focused on Western targets (such as al-Qaeda or the Islamic State), half-hearted against groups that primarily target Pakistani Shia and that have occasionally been involved in attacks against outsiders (such as Lashkar-e-Jhangvi), unwilling to act against Afghanistan-focused groups (such as the Afghan Taliban and Haqqani network), and supportive of groups that target India (such as the Lashkar e-Tayyiba and Jaish-e-Mohammad).

That partnership likely includes considerable Pakistani cooperation with Western intelligence agencies examining threats from citizens or visitors of Pakistani origin, though the full extent is unclear in the open domain. The counter-terrorism partnership’s most publicized aspect is, ironically, the one that ought to be the most secret — the U.S. “covert” program to target terrorists in Pakistan using armed drones. Pakistan has publicly opposed the strikes as violations of Pakistani sovereignty that generate excessive civilian casualties, but it appears the vast majority of the drone campaign occurred with the explicit or tacit consent of the Pakistan military, including permitting U.S. operations from Shamsi air base near Quetta for a decade from 2001 to 2011.

Pakistan is also critical for the U.S. mission in land-locked Afghanistan, even as its behavior undermines U.S. objectives there. The troubled state of U.S.-Russia relations following the latter’s invasion of Ukraine resulted in Russia shutting down the so-called Northern Distribution Network that re-supplied Afghanistan through the Central Asian republics. U.S.-Iran relations have become only more troubled since the beginning of Trump’s presidency, and appear likely to worsen further still. The United States has begun using Turkmenistan for “humanitarian cargo,” a euphemism that in this case likely means “nonlethal” supplies to the U.S. mission in Afghanistan. Thus, the United States presence in Afghanistan depends — and will depend for the foreseeable future — on Pakistan, which permits U.S. ground and air lines of communication. Absent unexpected, major improvements in U.S.-Russia or U.S.-Iran relations, or a U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan, this dependence on Pakistan cannot be alleviated. “No matter how great President Donald Trump makes America, he cannot win the war on geography,” observes Afghan expert and former U.S. official Barnett Rubin.

The U.S. presence in Afghanistan is primarily about preventing terrorist groups operating there, but there is some reporting that suggests elements of the U.S. government are wary of losing basing in Afghanistan that is useful to monitor Pakistani terrorist groups and Pakistan’s nuclear weapons development efforts. After the United States was evicted from Shamsi, it reportedly maintained the ability to operate drones from airbases in Jalalabad, Bagram, and Kandahar. U.S. fears over Pakistani nuclear stewardship have oscillated over time, but such concerns have repeatedly appeared “at the top” of U.S. national security worries, and Trump reemphasized them on Monday night. Academic, former U.S. official, and War on the Rocks senior editor Stephen Tankel identifies “keeping militants from getting their hands on nuclear material” as a vital security interest in Pakistan. This interest is comingled with another, “critical interest” in “preventing Indo-Pakistani nuclear escalation,” since Tankel assesses “weapons are most likely to fall into terrorists’ hands if forward-deployed during a conflict with India.” Pakistan likely possesses more than 100 nuclear weapons today and might possess fissile material for up to 200 or 300 nuclear weapons.

These U.S. interests — collecting intelligence on potential radicals in the Pakistani diaspora in the West, operating drones over Pakistani territory to engage in targeted assassinations of dangerous terrorists, resupplying the U.S. military presence in Afghanistan, and preventing the loss of control of Pakistan nuclear weapons — are substantially more important than the list of U.S. grievances against Pakistan. Pakistani support of groups that have targeted U.S. forces and its support of anti-India groups that have periodically targeted U.S. citizens may well be a moral travesty, but geopolitically it may be less costly than losing Pakistan’s cooperation in other areas.

To be sure, the pro and con columns are not neatly separated. Quietly accepting Pakistani support of terrorist groups may ultimately endanger the foremost U.S. security interest in Pakistan: preventing the loss of a nuclear weapon or other sensitive nuclear technology to radical non-state groups – a fear Trump raised in his speech. Violent extremist groups are ultimately a cancer on Pakistani society that pose a mortal danger to it. Already, the military is hesitant to confront anti-Afghan and anti-India groups in part because it seeks to triage the threats to Pakistani society, prioritizing those militants that actively target the Pakistani state while nudging remaining radicals to focus their zealous energies elsewhere.

However, a delineation of the entirety of U.S. interests suggests escalating coercive pressures against Pakistan is just as likely to endanger U.S. goals as further them. The most prominent reason given for a punitive U.S. Pakistan strategy is Pakistan’s behavior in Afghanistan, but there, as Rubin correctly stresses, “the United States risks provoking a blockade of its own forces.” Thus, in any game of brinksmanship, Pakistan is not bluffing — it has a good hand! Moreover, the Trump administration’s hand in 2017 is not the same as the Bush administration’s hand in 2001, when the Bush administration successfully demanded Pakistani abandonment of the Taliban government after 9/11 and support for U.S. operations in Afghanistan. Pakistan has alternative partners, namely China and Saudi Arabia, that can pick up some of the slack created by any U.S. funding cuts, and has been cultivating improved ties with Russia. China is expected to invest more than $50 billion as part of the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor (CPEC), though importantly the vast majority of this amount is in the form of loans rather than grant aid. Even so, China is aware of Pakistan’s credit risks, and would not make such enormous loans were it not prepared to defer or eliminate some of the debt in the event of a future Pakistan economic crisis. The size of CPEC loans also gives China a substantial stake in preventing the emergence of any multilateral containment regime that would cause meaningful harm to Pakistan’s economy.

To date, U.S. coercion has largely entailed modestly decreasing reimbursements it has paid for Pakistani military operations and limiting the types of defense equipment it transfers to Pakistan. Periodic calls to end Pakistan’s status as a major non-NATO ally would have modest symbolic meaning and nearly no substantive implications. In fairness, such levers can be pulled with little risk of serious blowback and just as little risk of serious results. It may well be appropriate to “at least stop sponsoring” Pakistan’s “noxious behaviors,” but such a case is built on fiscal prudence and normative concerns, rather than any great likelihood of altering Pakistani behavior. In fact, even the most vocal advocate of a more coercive strategy against Pakistan, C. Christine Fair, concludes, “it is unlikely that the United States can offer Pakistan any incentive that would be so valuable to Pakistan and its security interests that the [Pakistan] army would abandon” its current grand strategy.

The United States has a repertoire of coercive tools beyond just the cessation of foreign aid or restrictions on defense sales, including targeted sanctions of individuals in Pakistan’s government associated with terror groups or working to cease World Bank and International Monetary Fund financing. Each step along this escalatory path, though, encourages Pakistan to counter with coercion of its own: (1) restricting U.S. use of ground and air lines of communication through Pakistan, (2) preventing the operation of (non-stealthy) U.S. drones over Pakistani territory, (3) ignoring U.S. requests for intelligence regarding suspected terrorists in the West, and (4) permitting even greater freedom of maneuver to anti-India or anti-Afghan terrorist groups. In the deeper recesses of Pakistan’s coercive toolkit, Pakistan can give China access to U.S.-origin defense hardware, offer extended deterrence guarantees to Saudi Arabia or resume the transfer of ballistic missile or nuclear weapons technology, an illicit commerce it last engaged in during the previous era of U.S. sanctions in the 1990s.

Any brinksmanship initiated now by the United States would occur during a period of profound political weakness in Islamabad following the judicial dismissal of Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif. This state of affairs is not exogenous: It likely conforms to the Pakistan Army’s preferences. But until the next national elections in 2018, and quite likely even after them, civilian and military leaders will be jockeying for domestic authority, creating strong disincentives for international concessions. All of these factors conspire against U.S. pressure resulting in real change in Pakistan’s national security policy.

Lisa Curtis, the White House senior director for South Asia, recently told a New Delhi audience that there was no interest in the Trump administration to accept the status quo with Pakistan. But the reality is there are profound dangers in clumsy attempts to force Pakistan to alter its current policy, however unpalatable. Those advocating such a course of action are obligated to delineate what risks they are willing to take. Otherwise, they are in danger of replicating the inept rhetoric of the Trump administration’s Qatar, North Korea, and Iran policies or, even worse, transforming Pakistan into a true rogue state. For those who assert Pakistan’s current actions already merit such a rogue moniker, they ignore how much worse it can get. Pakistan is a frenemy — and as unpleasant as Pakistani behavior is, it could be much worse.

Turkey started a new trend in its foreign policy in 2016 whose most important components were improvement of ties with Russia, cooperation with Iran and opposition to establishment of a Kurdish state in Syria instead of trying to topple the legitimate government of Syrian President Bashar Assad, like reported by eurasiareview.com.

Since that time, Turkey’s foreign policy has practically moved outside the rail set for it by the United States. Therefore, the United States and Europe took unfriendly positions on Turkey’s failed coup d’état in 2016 and some analysts went as far as claiming that they were even masterminds of the botched coup one way or another.

At the same time, the insistence shown by the United States for helping Kurdish militia in Syria (including the militants of the People’s Protection Units or YPG) and its resistance against extradition to Turkey of US-based political and civil rights activist, Fethullah Gulen, who has been incriminated by Turkey as the main protagonist behind the failed 2016 coup, have been seen by the majority of politicians and political elites in Turkey as signs of Washington’s hostility or, at least, dishonesty in its relations with Ankara. As a result, these developments have further deepened an atmosphere of pessimism toward the United States’ policies in Turkey.

In addition, the crisis in Qatar’s relations with Arab allies of the US and show of serious support for Qatar by Iran and Turkey as well as imposition of new sanctions against Iran and Russia by the United States are all signs of new political alignments among regional and transregional players in West Asia region. On the other hand, these new alignments have been further highlighted by the effort made by Qatar and Turkey to get close to the axis formed by Russia, Iran and China as opposed to the alliance among the United States, Saudi Arabia and the Zionist regime of Israel.

All told, the question is does the existing trend in the region signify a new alignment or, at least, a change in old alignments, or positions taken by Turkey and Qatar are just temporary and ephemeral?

In response, the hypothesis that can be offered is that the change in the previous alignment in the region in which the axis of the United States, Arab countries and Turkey stood in the face of the opposite axis formed by Iran, Russia and China, has caused two important regional actors to distance from the Western – Arab axis and get close to the eastern (resistance) axis.

The gap in relations of Turkey and Qatar with the United States and the Saudi-led alliance in the region dates back to years ago. At that time, the support offered by these two countries to the Muslim Brotherhood as a social and political movement in the Arab world upset the United States and Saudi Arabia. Therefore, they preferred to support a coup d’état staged by Egypt’s former army chief, General Abdel Fattah el-Sisi, against the country’s then president, Mohamed Morsi.

However, since Turkey and Qatar aimed in their foreign policies to topple Syria’s government, despite fundamental differences with Saudi Arabia and the United States, they were somehow dragged toward the Western – Arab axis, which opposed the Syrian government. After Turkey changed its official stance on the issue of Syria, which took place when the United States did not accept to stop supporting establishment of an autonomous Kurdish region close to Turkey’s border with Syria, trilateral consultations among Russia, Turkey and Iran for the resolution of the crisis in Syria became more serious. The result has so far been holding of five trilateral meetings on Syria, establishment of ceasefire in the Arab country, and humanitarian exchanges in some important conflict zones such as Aleppo, in addition to establishment of no-conflict zones in Syria.

Following intensification of tensions between Qatar and other Arab states of the Persian Gulf, Doha started to drift away from the Western – Arab axis in the case of Syria and got closer to Turkey and Iran. This development further proves how real new alignments in the region are. The remarkable point in this regard is that while maintaining its past relations with the United States and Saudi Arabia, on the one hand, and with the European Union’s member states, on the other hand, Turkey has also adopted policies independent of the West and its regional allies.

This independence is so important to the government of Turkey that despite loud protests from Arab countries, it did not change its mind about military buildup in Qatar and, of course, this holds water for Qatar as well.

Of course, the decision by Turkey and Qatar to distance themselves from the axis formed by the United States, the Zionist regime and the Arab allies of Washington seems more to be a tactic under the present circumstances rather than a strategy. However, the reality, which must be taken into account here, is that some alliances like the military and economic alliance of Turkey with the United States and the European Union first started with these very tactics and through such cooperation modalities.

Qatar is an Arab country, which will not be able to maintain its current position in the absence of ties with its Arab neighbors and also without relations with the United States. Turkey, for its part, has the second most powerful army among the NATO member states and most of its defense and security structures are closely related to NATO.

A symbol of this relation is Incirlik Air Base near the Turkish city of Adana, where scores of warplanes belonging to NATO and its allies are deployed and according to various sources, 50-90 B61 atom bombs belonging to the United States are being kept there. Therefore, experts believe that if Turkey decides to get out of this organization, it would be only possible over a long period of about 20 years. On the other hand, about 60 percent of Turkey’s foreign trade is conducted with the member states of the European Union. Therefore, it would not be possible for Turkey to change its mind about membership in the European Union and replacing its member countries with other countries as trade partners, at least, in short term.

In view of the above facts, it can be concluded that although closeness of Turkey and Qatar to the anti-West resistance axis is not a strategic and long-term decision, it will lead to qualitative and quantitative expansion of ceasefire in Syria while causing these countries to oppose new anti-Palestinian policies of the Zionist regime. Turkey may also decide not to pay heed to new Western sanctions against Iran, Russia and Qatar.

Therefore, the current trend in which Turkey and Qatar have got closer to each other and their convergence with the anti-Western – Arab axis can be considered as a turning point from the viewpoint of the interests of other regional countries, especially Iran.

More cooperation by Iran with the axis formed by Turkey and Qatar, which despite being Sunni states are supporters of the revolutionary movement of the Muslim Brotherhood, will defuse the effort made by the axis of the United States and Saudi Arabia to isolate Iran. On the other hand, Iran’s cooperation with the axis of Turkey and Qatar will prevent this axis from turning into a threat for Iran. If the increasing military presence of Turkey in Qatar is taken into consideration, the importance and necessity of Iran’s presence in this regional alliance will become evident more than before.