International Shia News Agency

American strategy: the Dune phenomenon

Muhammad Saeed

SHAFAQNA (Shia International News Association)

ISIS, Daish, IS or any other militant group, currently maturing in certain specific regions, by any definition, are the sublime but alarming regeneration of Al-Qaeda that nurtured TTP for a long period in our region to enable unrelenting volatility besides fusing and grooming several other militant groups together around neighbourhoods that are of American interest. Before partially leaving this region, the American empire has also made arrangements for Al-Qaeda to relocate itself into other regions with new identities primarily with prolific objectives, one of them to overwhelmingly undermine alliances of Russian Federation. Other objectives must be to pin down China from setting foothold in a bid to keep the tapped or untapped resources unfortunately considered as preserved assets of American economy.

According to American strategists, insurgency inspired by the specific ideology of extremist /fundamentalist Islam as practised by Al-Qaeda, executes itself akin to desert sand dunes. In this phenomenon sand mounds keep on breaking up while parting their previous spots unnoticed and re-emerge, at times in greater mass, at new locations. This process of repositioning of sand dunes has been analogised with the Al-Qaeda ideology, which has undeniably proved the ability to manifest itself with greater potentials in other regions unerringly like dune phenomenon. There is, however, a fine tuning of ISIS or Daish type non state actors that are relocated dunes, in terms of increasing their capability and capacity of lethality, agility and outreach in given environment vis-a-vis Al-Qaeda’s successes and failures elsewhere including Pakistan.

During the last few decades Al-Qaeda has succeeded in accordance with American designed track to become nucleus of insurgencies in several regions in addition to providing fulcrum to certain individual terrorist/separatist groups in countries coincidently of immense interest to America and its allies. An objective view of the Al-Qaeda stimulated threat of holy war against infidels, an interesting mosaic illustrating either individual interests or pure political concerns, becomes evident across continents, especially among Muslim countries that happen to be actually key targets. The Al-Qaeda threat has on one hand facilitated American design to inculcate insecurity within individual countries/governments while on the other hand helped West to integrate their prowess in perpetual wars in many regions which actually have economic potentials ardently needed by the West and America. Almost all Muslim countries across different continents have been dragged to feel threatened/insecure on different accounts to include visible as well as hidden weaknesses.

Several Muslim monarchs, including that of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, have been infused with fear of losing their power and regimes while democratic governments, if any, in Muslim countries other than Pakistan, Malaysia and Indonesia, are also petrified on account of threat to their systems of power. Russia and China, though non-Muslim countries and are in opposite camp to West/America, feel constant pressure from terrorist outfits that are put on auto mode of aboriginality. These countries are well infested with homegrown militant/extremist groups like Chechens, Uyghur, ETIM, IMU and several other splinter groups. Irrespective of the manner of governments in Central Asia, South East Asia, and Far East or across Africa, the threat of the Islamic ideology has been orchestrated as the single most concern everywhere. From Boko Haram to Ahrar-ul-Hind and Jundullah to IS or any other groups surely in the process of creation, are hence the viable instruments that permits the West and Americans to profusely instill fear, dissension, deterrence, subversion, stain and carry out sustained propaganda against desired target country at suitable time, place and environment.

In such a scenario the rapidity of proliferation of extremist entities has obviously enhanced tremendously within the last few months. A critical appreciation of ensuing environment hence reveals that the region currently preferred for proliferation of extremist groups is specifically Iraq, Syria and adjoining areas that has the ability to retain strategic interest of the world powers mainly for long term economic gains for America and its partners including Israel. Iran and Syria, considered enemies of the US/West, have now been almost constrained to accept the American tactic of becoming its allies in the face of ISIS intimidation.

It is apparent that America has succeeded to exploit the dune phenomenon once again and rallied support of new allies in addition to traditional partners in order to continue threatening others with the key objective to ruling the world singularly. It would not be out of context to make reference to three instances whereby Western strategic planners revealed their ambitions to rule the world by using all available means. Lord Curzon, British Empire’s Viceroy of India in 1898, said, “To me, countries are pieces on chessboard upon which is being played out a great game for domination of the world.” In another instance in 1948, George Kennan, US strategic planner, contemplated: “We have 50% of the world’s wealth but only 6.3% of its population. In this situation, our real job in the coming period is to maintain this position of disparity. To do so, we have to dispense with all sentimentality; we would cease thinking about human rights, the raising of living standards and democratization of others”. In the same perspective soon after the 9/11 situation, Thomas Friedman, another contemporary era strategic planner of USA, declared that “This is World War Three”.

It appears that the American strategy to use this mechanism of making, breaking and proliferating extremist groups while capitalising on the political and personal vested interests of almost all Muslim as well as non-Muslim countries of different regions would continue in the foreseeable future to undermine others and to gain economic benefits. This strategy of instilling fear among variety of countries, including falsely or truly sacrificing western nationals like Steven Scotlof and James Foley at the hands of extremists, so far superbly successful, is unlikely to be challenged from dominating the Muslim countries, until the actual demeanor of nonviolent Islam’s message is continued to be misinterpreted and misused to advance purely political ambitions by the contemporary but so called monarchs and leaders of Muslim countries.

There is a dire need to signify the spiritual interpretation of Islam rather than a facade of this sacrosanct religion that displays bloodshed, tyranny, regress and degradation of human values, ethics and norms of humanity. From Pakistan’s perspective, there appears to be a constructive beginning towards defeating the menace of terrorism/extremism. Zarb-e-Azb, initiated by the ever resilient Pakistan Armed Forces with the support of masses, needs to be destined as a rewarding success. This victory should follow various bold steps on war footings to deradicalise the ever willing Pakistani society while streamlining long pending madrassah and curriculum reforms across the country without further delay. Our resilience to complete these tasks would indeed veto the world players not to use dune phenomenon at least against Pakistan anymore.

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