New al-Qaeda in the making

As for now, what we in Pakistan and the region must embrace is an incoming onslaught of ISIS in Afghanistan

Centcom has published a report regarding ISIS elements in Iraq and Syria. It says “there is a literal ‘ISIS army’ in detention in Iraq and Syria… 10,000 ISIS leaders and fighters in detention facilities throughout Syria and 20,000 in Iraq.”

Interestingly, Centcom commander Erik Kurilla envisions three ISIS categories in Syria and Iraq: one that are at large, fighting on ground; two, those detained in prisons; and three, those young children that ISIS is radicalising. Kurilla, in fact, gives the exact example of the Al-Hol refugee camp, holding 25,000 children, which are at ISIS target.

But there are questions arising from Kurilla’s statements. Rather the whole make-up of his argument seems to remind us of how al-Qaeda was made to evolve and spread earlier pre-9/11. This was in the grey-zones of the Afghan War, wherein several mujahideen factions were busy fighting off the Russians and later fighting each other for power over Kabul. And in this grey-zone was born al-Qaeda — a recruitment and training centre for aspiring militant from all around the world. It’s worth remembering that al-Qaeda sprouted in Afghanistan when the Geneva Accords for Soviet withdrawal had been signed, and as such al-Qaeda did not partake in any significant battle against the Soviets. So, when Hillary Clinton admits that the US funded al-Qaeda at that time, she shies away from admitting that the purpose of al-Qaeda was not to counter the Soviets, but the whole Muslim world. Rather Bin Laden had been involved in militancy and recruitment in Sudan, Somalia, Yemen and North Africa before reaching Afghanistan and had been under CIA radar all along. From the Afghan grey-zone, great rebel leaders like Nasir al-Wuhayshi, who was in Afghanistan in 1998, made al-Qaeda in Yemen; Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was there in 1999 and made al-Tawhid wal-Jihad in Iraq, which later became ISIL; and all top LIFG leadership that later toppled Gaddafi were trained in Afghanistan before reassembling in Britain.

Cutting short, war-torn states — whose political and economic landscape is scattered, unstable and failing — is a perfect ground to culture militancy. The CIA and MI6 links with al-Qaeda and other militant groups is well-documented, but the dominant narrative is that the US is fighting off ISIS in Iraq and Syria, and working against terror in other parts of the world too. So, one lightly thinks that terrorism must be becoming the thing of the past, and that now world history must be moving into a next stage. But the Centcom report is telling a different story — a story of a rebirth of ISIS that will keep Syria and Iraq destabilised, and that will be redeployed in other places where needed, especially in Afghanistan where that Taliban are thinking that they have won the war, not knowing that the same CIA that used the Afghan soil to export terror into the Muslim world is now readying those same elements to infiltrate Afghanistan, again.

So, the terror-phase for humanity has to stay for longer. The proxy-war culture staring in the Cold War is only being evolved into a proxy-terror culture.

Ukraine had become another grey-zone for the creation of a potential global terror outfit. The Ukraine War has emboldened the country’s anti-Russia, white-supremist political elements to consolidate their militant power under the notorious Azov Battalion. The Azov Battalion, with its swastika logo and dominated with far-right elements, came to the limelight with the Donbas War (2014). From that early time, the Azov has been trained by British trainers, and has been the recipient of large inflows of weapons from the West. Reportedly, the Azov leadership disapproved Poroshenko’s Minsk Agreement and has threatened Zelensky with life, if he tries to make peace with Putin.

With relentless inflow of small arms and funds, the Azov has started recruiting like-minded youth, becoming an unformidable state-within-state kind of entity. It has come to the fore that Azov’s semi-underground outfit the ‘Misanthropic Division’ has been recruiting heavily among neo-Nazi youth in France, Germany and Scandinavia. In March 2018, US Congress was presented a bill to prevent the US from providing arms and training assistance to Azov in Ukraine. Regarding the bill, Republican Ro Khanna said, “White supremacy and neo-Nazism are unacceptable and have no place in our world.” The bill was approved, but arms and training to Azov did not cease.

The issues for humanity are: is Azov being evolved into a critical node for a transnational right-wing violent extremist network? Will Ukraine be a hub for transnational white supremacy? Will Azov be the next white-al-Qaeda? Already Azov is recruiting foreigners and bringing them to its training grounds; already Azov-linked terrorist have started showing up around the world. Like Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 worshippers in a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand in 2019, he had links with Azov.

So, what is humanity to embrace — a clash of civilizations, as Samuel Huntington predicted; or a state of confusion, as in hybrid warfare, where unidentified assailants attack unspecified targets darting society with seizures every now and then; or even more so an utter-confusion, as in every state engulfed in its own perpetual internal wars — wars between politicians, between institutions, between communities, ever-embattled in intermural wars, exhausted with false visceral aspirations about power and opulence, blinded away from the real dangers that approach them and humanity. What a folly humanity plays with itself!

As for now, what we in Pakistan and the region must embrace is an incoming onslaught of ISIS and the likes, in Afghanistan — because the US never loses a war, it just keeps perpetuating it in different forms. The purpose is to keep the enemy constantly in a state of defensive fear that keeps society interrupted from any true, meaningful progress or prosperity. Maybe we might not be sure about such a scenario to occur, but US Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley was already sure of such a scenario on the eve of US withdrawal from Afghanistan, when he said in October 2021, “I do think that conditions are to develop over the course of time that will allow for the reconstitution of al-Qaida and or ISIS (in Afghanistan) … sometime between say six to 12, maybe 36months.”

So, when Kurilla said what he said, it seems the exact substantiation of what Milley said 15months ago!

Published in The Express Tribune, January 6^th, 2023.

Like Opinion & Editorial on Facebook, follow @ETOpEd on Twitter to receive all updates on all our daily pieces.