Patrick Cockburn: U.S. not confronting Saudi Arabia helped ISIS grow – “Maybe created a Frankenstein”

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Kurt Wallace:  This is Kurt Wallace and our guest today on Rare is Patrick Cockburn author of The Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising and Patrick, thanks for being with us today.

Patrick Cockburn:  Thank you.

Kurt Wallace:  Patrick ISIS appeared out of nowhere for most people the Islamic state has been quite dramatic publicly with beheadings and mass killings of tribes.  You point out the sophistication of their tactics though and you quote “this isn’t random slaughter” what do you mean by that?

Patrick Cockburn:  Well, I think that it’s carefully organized.  The Islamic state is a rather chilling combination of religious fanaticism and military expertise.  This organization really grew out of the war in Iraq which had been going on now since 2003.  They use violence, use terror, but use it rather expertly.

They’re one of the first organizations to use the internet YouTube, social media to publicize their own atrocities chopping off head and so forth.  And they do this not with just because they’re bloody minded but in order to terrify their opponents and it’s pretty successful.

You can see that in June when the Iraqi army (which outnumber them many times) basically ran away when ISIS capture Mosul in northern Iraq.  And a few months later in August the same thing happened with the Iraqi Kurds the famous Peshmerga fighters who were meat to be much tougher than the Iraqi Army.  They also fled.  So, I think at least they have a sort of strategy of terror which has proved successful.

Kurt Wallace:  In terms of American involvement in the Middle East, we’ve had this failed war in Iraq and Afghanistan.  It created a vacuum.  It created his opportunity and this space for a group like ISIS to come into power.  Americans don’t want to go back to war overwhelmingly.  They don’t want to be involved in another wasted effort in the Middle East.  But, is this organization as powerful as it is a real concern for American interests and European interests?

Patrick Cockburn:  Well yes, because it’s created it’s own state.  Al Qaeda was really a pretty small organization.  It carried out one horrible operation, 9/11.  But otherwise, it’s activities since then have been petty and the degree of threat that it poses has always been exaggerated.

I think the intelligence services of the US and other countries rather liked Al Qaeda as an opponent.  Because you could say to everybody “here’s a terrible threat and we’re degrading it, we killed he deputy of operations” and so forth.  But it was really small stuff.

Now they’re really facing with a very large organization.  Which can probably put over 100k fighters into the field.  And, they don’t really know what to do about it.

Kurt Wallace:  We have the involvement of Saudi Arabia on 9/11 and funding of Al Qaeda along with Pakistan’s ongoing funding of the Taliban.  After reading some of your work it seems the US could be considered somewhat like a naive puppet to the Middle Eastern power brokers?

Patrick Cockburn:  I’m not sure how naive or certainly those who are responsible for this what happened.  But it’s pretty extraordinary after 9/11 when we have the war on terror so called and vast resources employed and great big budgets and civil rights are curtailed.

And, it’s pretty obvious that 9/11 — 15 out of the 19 hijackers where Saudi.  Bin Laden leader of Al Qaeda comes from the Saudi elite.  US and the official inquiry on 9/11 said the money for it came primarily from private donors in Saudi Arabia and the gulf.

But the one country that isn’t really targeted by the US is Saudi Arabia.  At that time Al Qaeda was based in Afghanistan under the protection of the Taliban.  And the Taliban was famously aided, even created by the Pakistani army, by ISI, the intelligence branch.  But again there was no confrontation with Pakistan.

So, the whole war on terror was really targeted against Iraq.  Which had nothing to do — Saddam Hussein had nothing to do with this and they ignored the origin of what happened and went on doing so for about 10 years.

So, I think that at the moment this controversy about the CIA and torture — which is very important.  But it tends to obscure these other rather extraordinary failure that we had the war on terror.  But ISIS they certainly are terrorists now dominate a large part of the Middle East.  And the Taliban is up and running.  Nobody is really called for account for this.

Kurt Wallace:  Now its interesting the CIA torture report, it released all the details.  What could be considered propaganda for ISIS in the form of presenting it as American terrorism in the eyes of those supporting the caliphate.

Patrick Cockburn:  Yeah but I don’t think it has that kind of effect on them.  First of all, the caliphate is primarily directing against the Shia the Shia government in Bagdad.  And is directed against the government in Damascus which is sort of connected to the Shia.  So, I think that the caliphate is very anti-American.

But, something like this — does it make any difference.  Not really, I don’t think for the way they think.  They would of kind of assumed this thing was going on.  It’s rather like Abu Ghraib in 2004.  It was sometime argued that by revealing that people had been tortured in Abu Ghraib prison and mistreated this was going to help the opposition.  But actually Iraqis knew it was happening.

They knew more about this than Americans did because it was right on their doorstep.  And the same I think is true of the CIA torture.

Kurt Wallace:  In terms of pulling the United States into the conflict even further, are there people working behind the scenes in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia, Pakistan as we mentioned before that could be speculated or that there is evidence to present that we’re doing the bidding again?

Patrick Cockburn:  I think by not confronting Saudi Arabia — and the ideology of ISIS and the Islamic state is very similar to Wahhabism which is a variant of Islam.  Which is the official religion of Saudi Arabia — that by never confronting Saudi Arabia this certainly has eased the development of the Islamic state.

Saudi Arabia is deeply anti-Shia, so is the Islamic state.  It in the past has knocked down Shia mosques, so has the Islamic state.  So, there are many similarities.  I think that Obama’s pledge to degrade and ultimately destroy the Islamic state will be undermined by the fact that he put together this coalition of powers.  Several of which are complicit including Saudi Arabia and Qatar and Turkey in creating the Jihadi movement and supporting it.

Maybe they created a Frankenstein, maybe they went further than had originally intended.  But they were kind of behind it and still have sympathy for it.  But ignoring those who are actually fighting it on the ground.  Which are the Syrian army, the Syrian Kurds originally were ignored though they were fighting it pretty effectively at Kobani — Iran, the Shia militias.

Now it is very difficult if you are fighting the Islamic state if you basically ignore most of the others who are fighting it.  So, I think there’s a great confusion of policy which have played into the hands of the Jihadis.

Kurt Wallace:  In terms of the 28 pages that were never released, Congressman Jones and Massey (representatives of two different states in the US) are pushing and putting pressure to release these 28 pages that Obama said he would release and he never did.  Does this play a part in the relationship to Saudi Arabia?

Patrick Cockburn:  Sure, because it’s assumed and pretty well proved that these 28 pages are all about relations with Saudi Arabia and possibly the complicity of some members of the Royal Family in 9/11.  And certainly in the development of Al Qaeda.

I think from the beginning the Bush administration and the Obama administration by not releasing the 28 pages shows how they were never going to stand up to Saudi pressure.  And of course I think this hamstrung the so-called war on terror from the beginning.

Kurt Wallace:  In terms of the weapons that have been provided that seem to go into the hands of ISIS — the air strikes.  These are build ups that we’ve seen in the past, mistakes that we’ve seen in the past by the United States and their allies involving themselves in the Middle East.  Is there a solution in dealing with this problem now that we can do or would it be possible that we back off and that is a solution?

Patrick Cockburn:  Look I think when it comes to foreign intervention, you can justify it in particular circumstances when the Islamic state was advancing on Kobani and the Syrian Kurds or maybe Bagdad.  But permanent involvement has been pretty disastrous in the past.

Plus, US interests are different for those of Iraq and Syria and the people living there.  Also, you’re joining up in somebody else’s civil war.  And there’s always going to be consequences and unpleasant consequence for that.

So, I think US intervention — what could be done?  Well, the Islamic state and ISIS grew out of war, this is kind of a war machine.  They’re the kind of people who relate to the world through violence, the guys who are leading it.  And you want to weaken them — they should try to end the war or deescalate the violence in Syria.

You see, the reason that ISIS the Islamic state grew powerful was there they were originally in Iraq.  The got a lot of military experience there but they’d been beaten back for various reasons.  They still had bases and some resources.  Then come 2011 people said “well the final American troops left Iraq” that just isn’t what happened.  What happened was the Syrian war started and Al Qaeda knew a lot about waging war and sent it’s people into Syria and this rapidly became a very powerful movement.

Really, the Syrian war restarted the Iraqi civil war.  You want to end the war in Iraq?  What they should try to do is arrange cease fires (not a solution) but cease fires between the Assad forces and the rebel forces that are a  part of the Islamic state.  But instead of fighting each other they fight the Islamic state.

At the moment the US policy is we’re going to fight the Islamic state but we also want to get rid of Assad.  But hold on a minute Assad is the main enemy of the Islamic state.  Get rid of Assad and you have the Islamic state there instead.  This is a choice that has to be made and is a choice that hasn’t been made and that’s much to the advantage of the Islamic state.

Kurt Wallace:  What about the strategy in talking about fostering diplomacy of the United States and it’s allies joining with Muslims that aren’t a part of the caliphate in encouraging them t deal with it on their own terms.

Patrick Cockburn:  Yeah, that’s the policy in Iraq.  But, it’s kind of whether they want to repeat what happened in 2006-08 when the US encouraged the so-called awakening movement among Sunni those members of the Sunni community who’d been angered by what Al Qaeda was doing there and that sort of worked to a degree.  But the US had 150k troops there, ISIS is much more powerful than Al Qaeda used to be.

It’s not something you can easily call a second time.  You know if you’re a Sunni there and that’s the community that the Islamic state draws it’s support from and you oppose the Islamic state these guys will kill you.  They’ll kill your family they’ll kill you and your tribe if you’re tribal.

There’s a tribe there called the Abu Nimer.  It arose up against ISIS.  ISIS defeated them and has killed at the last count I think 581 of them.  So, its difficult for any internal uprising against ISIS to succeed.

Kurt Wallace:  This is an issue also about ideas and beliefs.  It’s been described as a “holy fascism” movement.  So, the complexity of the hearts and minds of the people over there is much greater than fighting over land or territory or resources?

Patrick Cockburn:  Sure, it’s a ideological movement.  It has roots and it attracts support.  I was talking to people — I was just in Northern Iraq, I was talking to people from Mosul there the biggest city that ISIS has captured about 2 million people.

And they said “yes, a lot of people (Sunni) are joining ISIS still”.  And, that they join it because they’ll pay $400 a month to volunteers and basic fighters and more to officers with experience and that’s a place where there are no jobs.

But, also there’s a feeling there according to people I was talking to that bad ISIS may be that if the Iraqi army comes back with Shia militias it will be even worse.  So, it’s not the people necessarily love ISIS but are even more terrified of their opponents.

Kurt Wallace:  Patrick Cockburn author of The Jihadis Return ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising, thanks for being with us today on Rare.

Patrick Cockburn:  Thank you.