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Wars without winners

Contrary to the view that extremism thrives when America is absent, empirical facts indicate that the opposite is truer. And
each of the countries at the centre of global concerns over extremism is in fact one that has seen direct or indirect
western intervention, not western absence
In her autobiographical work, based on her tenure as U.S. Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton makes a startling statement
while explaining the need for U.S. intervention around the world, despite the dangers to American lives. While we can
and must work to reduce the danger, writes Ms. Clinton, the only way to eliminate risk entirely is to retreat entirely and to
accept the consequences of the void we leave behind. When America is absent, extremism takes root, our interests
suffer, and our security at home is threatened (Hard Choices, p.387, Simon & Schuster, 2014).

It is curious that Ms. Clinton thinks that extremism thrives when America is absent, as empirical facts and the patterns one
can glean from them indicate that the opposite is truer. While Iraq and ISIS brutal advance on Baghdad is at the top of the
news now, it must be remembered that each of the countries today at the centre of the worlds concerns over extremism is
in fact a country that has seen direct or indirect western intervention, not western absence Afghanistan, Syria, Libya
and Iraq.
Authoritarian yet secular regimes
There are other patterns to these interventions. In each of these countries, what the United States, along with allies
sought to oust were authoritarian regimes that were secular. The Soviet-backed regimes of President Najibullah in
Afghanistan, President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Saddam Hussein in Iraq and Muammar Qadhafi in Libya. The
movements these leaders set up were dictatorial; they controlled their people through stifling intelligence agencies, and
crushed all political Islamic movements where they could. But a by-product of the secularism was that women and
minorities had a more secure status under these regimes than under their Islamist and monarchist neighbours like Saudi
Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait and Bahrain. Unlike them, Mr. Assad, Qadhafi, Saddam and Najibullah had women and minorities in
their cabinets, and a sense of Arab/Afghan nationalism overshadowed the sectarian divide in their countries.
When the West has tried to intervene to oust them, it has always strengthened the opposition to these leaders, which by
definition includes groups that are anti-secular, jihadi extremists. Whether it is by design or otherwise, it is these groups
that have eventually taken control of the entire opposition. Finally, this intervention has led to a carving up of the country
on sectarian lines; along bitter, historic, ethnic and communal lines.
A pattern
Take a look at how the pattern played out in each of the countries mentioned. In Afghanistan, the U.S. quite purposefully
developed Islamic jihad as a counterpoint to Soviet communism, with American arms and Pakistani training. As Ms. Clinton
admitted in interviews and testimonies after being confirmed the Secretary of State, the U.S. was fighting a problem it had
helped create.

It seemed like a great idea, she said in an interview to U.S. channel CBS (October 6, 2009), Back in the 80s to
embolden and train and equip Taliban, mujahidin, jihadists against the Soviet Union, which had invaded Afghanistan.
With our help, and with the Pakistani support this group including, at that time, Bin Laden, defeated the Soviet Union
And we left the problems of a well-equipped, fundamentalist, ideological and religious group that had been battle
hardened to the Afghans and the Pakistanis.
Such candour was clearly not possible toward the end of Ms. Clintons term and the possible beginning of her campaign
for U.S. President in 2016, and hence was not repeated in her book, Hard Choices, but the point is understood.
Extremism takes root, not when America is absent, but indeed when America is present, and then goes absent, leaving
battle hardened, fundamentalist groups in its wake with each intervention.

Ms. Clinton is not alone in her faulty logic however, and is joined by other western leaders. In New Delhi this month for
bilateral meetings, French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius, who had pushed the Security Council for direct intervention
to oust Mr. Assad, including counselling air strikes, made a baffling statement in response to a question on ISIS terrorists.
The groups now attacking Iraq, he said, are exactly the groups that France has been fighting in Syria. France has
always spoken of opposing terrorist groups everywhere.
Again, this is not quite accurate. During the Libyan crisis, the French government was at the forefront of backing the
Libyan rebels who eventually stormed Tripoli after six months of air raids by NATO aircraft. During that time the French
military admitted to airdropping weapons and ammunitions for the rebels, and the local media reported that about 40
tonnes of weapons and tanks were sent in over the western Tunisian border. None of this was in line with the U.N.
mandate of the responsibility to protect citizens. When the rebels finally entered Tripoli, NATO forces on the ground
were led in by the Tripoli Brigade, with three commanders Abdel Hakim Belhadj, a former al-Qaeda terrorist, arrested
by the U.K. several years earlier, Abu Oweiss, a Qatari-trained commander, and Mahdi Al-Harati, an Irish Libyan who quit
the revolution later that year to set up the Islamist militant group Liwa Al-Umma that went to fight against Mr. Assads
army in Syria.
Helping the extremist militants
Meanwhile in Libya, Qadhafis ouster and brutal killing ushered in an era of jihadist control Libya had never seen before.
Cities like Benghazi came under the control of groups like Ansar-al-Sharia, while the newly elected assembly voted in full
Sharia law in 2013. AQSL or Al-Qaeda Senior Leadership and AQIM or Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghrib have
strengthened their presence and use parts of the country to train cadres operating in other parts of Africa including
Kenya and Mali. Inside Libya, those who protested, like the secular army commanders and human rights activists who had
originally rebelled against Qadhafi, were either sidelined or murdered. Last month, famous human rights activist Salwa
Bugaighis, a firebrand who rejected the hijab, and criticised Belhadj openly, was shot dead in Benghazi. Speaking to the
New Yorker magazine, her best friend said, Sometimes I think that we just ****** up by removing Qadhafi that I would
rather live under a dictator and not worry about the safety of my family. Its a mistake Libyans are paying for every day,
even as the West turned its interest and attention away from them, and to Syria.
In Syria, the West averted a full-blown intervention in September 2013 by only a few days, when British Parliament voted
against strikes on Syria, and U.S. President Barack Obama decided to take the decision to the U.S. Congress. But its
support to the Free Syrian Army (FSA), like the support to the Mujahideen has wound up helping the extremist rather
than the so-called moderate militants there. In each part of Syria where terrorists of ISIL or the Jabhat Al Nasrah have
won control, it has killed or co-opted these very rebels of the FSA and acquired the weapons smuggled to them via Qatar
and Saudi Arabia. Last month, Mr. Obama asked the U.S. Congress for another $500 million to train and equip these
soldiers. Britain committed to providing more than 20 million in equipment in 2013, according to the BBC, and while
France denies it, rebels in Syria say they have received French anti-aircraft missiles, assault rifles, pistols and
ammunition.
Turning on the West
Unfortunately, for the West, there is also another pattern to its form of intervention that the groups it enables,
invariably take its weapons, and then turn their jihadi guns on it (the West). From the Taliban and Osama, to the rebels in
Benghazi, the U.S. has been the hardest hit by these very groups it once saw as the means to its interventional ends. Yet,
U.S. Senator John McCain, who was in New Delhi recently to meet the Indian leadership, seems to ignore the evidence
repeatedly. In 2011, he visited rebels in Libya and demanded that they be armed by the U.S. I think we could do the
same thing that we did in the Afghan struggle against the Russians, he said in a speech at that time. Two years later, he
was in Syria, being photographed with militant leaders, and demanding that the U.S. arm them, the way it had in
Afghanistan.
Following that lead, the U.S. and its European allies will be guilty eventually, of having helped the same terrorists in Syria,
whom they want to attack in Iraq, much like when the West helped the Taliban in Afghanistan, only to end up sending
drones after them in Pakistan. All of which will certainly disprove the case made by Ms. Clinton on the absence of America

and the rise of extremism. Churchill once said, history is written by the victors. In the jihadi wars of Afghanistan, Libya,
Syria and Afghanistan however, the narrative is conflicted, because there really are no winners, and everybody loses.

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