{"id":10175,"date":"2015-07-18T08:23:40","date_gmt":"2015-07-18T13:23:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10175"},"modified":"2015-07-18T08:23:40","modified_gmt":"2015-07-18T13:23:40","slug":"endless-enemies-how-the-us-is-supporting-the-islamic-state-by-fighting-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=10175","title":{"rendered":"Endless enemies – how the US is supporting the Islamic State by fighting it"},"content":{"rendered":"

Endless enemies – how the US is supporting the Islamic State by fighting it <\/a><\/span>\"\"<\/h3>\n
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From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State to Assad, the US is fighting terrorists of its own creation by partnering with other terrorists of its own creation<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Geopolitics is a murky game. Precisely how murky is reflected in the well-worn phrase, \u201cThe enemy of my enemy is my friend.\u201d<\/p>\n

What happens, though, when you follow that ancient proverb with the faith of a religious believer?<\/p>\n

Now that the war on the \u201cIslamic State\u201d (IS) is, ostensibly, in full-swing, the US is making \u201cfriends\u201d out of enemies, old and new. Among our new friends is al-Qaeda.<\/p>\n

Except they are supposedly not \u201cour\u201d friends, but friends of our allies.<\/p>\n

Al-Qaeda, freedom fighters for Gulf monarchies<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Turkey are now working to support al-Qaeda\u2019s official arm in Syria, Jabhat al-Nusra, to re-take Syrian territory from Bashir al-Assad. The strategy resulted in a coalition of rebel groups, led by the al-Qaeda faction, conquering Idlib in April.<\/p>\n

The three regional powers claim they are hoping to compel al-Nusra to renounce its relationship to al-Qaeda \u2013 but the reality is they are funding the al-Qaeda affiliate without any meaningful guarantee of control.<\/p>\n

\u201cNusra will stay with al-Qaeda unless the other rebel forces are able to unify into one force,\u201d\u00a0said<\/a>\u00a0one al-Nusra member. \u201c[Al-Qaeda leader Ayman] al-Zawahiri says the unification of Muslims is more important than membership in any group.\u201d<\/p>\n

According to Rami Abdelrahman of the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights, al-Nusra is \u201cnot so different from IS. They want to make an emirate but are looking for the right opportunity.\u201d<\/p>\n

Publicly, the official line is that the Saudi-Qatari-Turkish strategy is not directly funding al-Nusra, although the geopolitical coalition is aware that al-Nusra will benefit from the support to Islamist rebel groups.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

– See more at: http:\/\/www.middleeasteye.net\/columns\/endless-enemies-how-us-supporting-islamic-state-fighting-it-1621962798#sthash.A6sh8j6a.dpuf<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Endless enemies – how the US is supporting the Islamic State by fighting it From al-Qaeda to the Islamic State to Assad, the US is fighting terrorists of its own creation by partnering with other terrorists of its own creation Geopolitics is a murky game. Precisely how murky is reflected in the well-worn phrase, \u201cThe […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[7364,23,7365,7366,442,447,2092,776,7367,818,848],"class_list":["post-10175","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geopolitics","tag-airstrikes","tag-al-qaeda","tag-al-nusra-front","tag-idlib","tag-iraq","tag-islamic-state","tag-nafeez-ahmed","tag-syria","tag-syrian-army","tag-turkey","tag-usa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10175","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10175"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10175\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10176,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10175\/revisions\/10176"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10175"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10175"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10175"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}