generalspeaking

What a Tangled Web We've Woven

In taking sides and separating friends from enemies there are times when complex issues arise out of seemingly simple solutions. Never more obvious than when one country interferes in the internal affairs of another, where culture, religion, heritage, societal norms intersect in a manner foreign to the country that seeks intervention. And then there is the more subtle engagement of cultures and societal normatives interacting when people migrate from one geographic location to another.

The fall-out from intervention whose long-range effects have not been usefully contemplated for potential consequences, often comes back to haunt a region that has been destabilized and not the least bit helped by foreign 'assistance'. This was seen when, during the Russian invasion of Afghanistan, the U.S. CIA helped to provide weaponry and to train Afghan mujahadeen along with Pakistan, to battle the invading foreigners.

And then those battle-hardened mujahadeen calling themselves the Taliban, fought for the right to capture, control and administer the country, against the Northern Alliance comprised of a multitude of Afghan warlords and political parties. The Taliban, ensconced in Afghanistan after their success, made common cause with collegial al-Qaeda which became the living nightmare of the United States.

When the United States marched into Iraq with their Coalition of the Willing partners to unseat the tyrannical Saddam Hussein, depicting him as a threat to the world, they unseated a minority Baathist who kept the Sunni majority and the Iraqi Kurds under his merciless thumb, unleashing a bloody sectarian war between Sunni and Shia, kept in check by their now-deposed dictator.

But now Iraq is more destabilized than ever with ongoing terror attacks, and it has moved cozily into religious communion with Iran, a country it latterly spent a decade brutally battling, now a nuclear-aspiring power that does in fact represent a threat to world peace and stability. This was not supposed to happen under American democratic tutelage; a country that the U.S. freed from its former brutality has returned to a different brutality, no less miserable and just as threatening.

Another Baathist regime where Alawite Shiites led a regime that oppressed its Sunni majority population and refused its Kurds citizenship, has entered central casting.  President Bashar al Assad of Syria was a popular figure in the United States recognized as authoritarian, but acceptably so, until he began emulating his late father in tamping down rebellious revolutionaries with the help of his sponsoring Iranian allies.

Canada, like the United States, Britain and other NATO countries made efforts to train the Afghan forces, its military and national police to Western standards. Supplying them with uniforms, and weaponry and guidance that will be used in fairly short order by the returning Taliban whose alliance with al-Qaeda has never been diminished. In the interim, the Western allies are puzzled by the number of Afghan trainees that have turned their gifted weapons upon their trainers.

The record in North Africa among Muslim countries is little different. Canada and the United States set up military training programs for Malian military, particularly the paratroopers who formed the country's elite presidential guard loyal to the democratically elected president. Whom a coup, a year later, unseated. Those who were trained by Canada attempted a counter-coup, only to be defeated, taken prisoner, tortured and killed by opposing Malian military.

There are some movements that are inexorable, unstoppable, and during this era in human relations the movement that stands out is one that derives its impetus from traditional, historic Islamic military action to acquire greater tracts of geography and larger religious adherents in an ongoing effort to dominate as much of the world as can be accomplished, through jihad.

The traditional, conventional dictators of the Middle East and North Africa who had oppressed their people, violated their trust, absorbed and despoiled the riches of their natural resources are slowly being replaced by theocratic tyrants, inspired by the advent of the Iranian Islamic Revolution and Saudi Arabia's oil wealth spreading its Wahhabist ideology throughout the Muslim world; Shia jihad for the former, Sunni for the latter.

The struggle for hegemony and power between the larger, more populous Sunni bloc and the smaller, soon-to-be-more-powerful (through nuclear arms) Shia bloc presents one element of a complex strategy, the other being each of the adversaries finding common cause in their violent opposition to the decadent, deceitful West whom they sneeringly describe as Crusaders, infidels and Zionists.

The West has become spectators in the arena of the struggle between the two major sects of Islam. A struggle that includes the disintegration of one country after another from dysfunctional malaise governed by secular-oriented autocratic government, be it a sheikdom, a kingdom or a theocracy, to fully Sharia-led Islamist governments taking the helm of abysmally religiously-manipulated power restricting human rights and threatening those who oppose them.

Solutions are frustratingly evasive. Non-interference is not an option. It is not possible to remain outside the play and interplay of nations falling one after the other into the hands of fanatics posing as responsible executive powers. Yet those who find their inspiration in the more radical elements of their faith cannot be unseated by outside intervention other than by military means, and this is not a feasible option, until and unless it becomes an existential imperative.

The world is living through a dilemma of unforeseen proportions as human nature and invention intersect to give us industrialized, technologically advanced countries facing the prospect of being covertly invaded by scores of innocent-enough migrants seeking a better life for themselves, bringing along with them those cultural, social, religious and heritage aspects that sooner or later morph into threats to the welcoming culture, social order and national laws.

The end to this absorbing, multi-faceted play has not yet been written.

Labels: Communications, Controversy, Crisis Politics, Culture, Democracy, Islamism, Social-Cultural Deviations

posted by Pieface @ Saturday, January 26, 2013