Middle-east Arab News Opinion | Asharq Al-awsat

Opinion: Why are extremists fighting the world? | ASHARQ AL-AWSAT English Archive 2005 -2017
Select Page
Media ID: 55321220
Caption:

Vehicles drive past a flag of the al-Qaeda linked Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant at the entrance to the city of Raqqa, eastern Syria, on October 4, 2013. (REUTERS/Nour Fourat)


In Saudi Arabia and some other regional countries, there has been an intellectual, political and security campaign targeting violent extremist groups for at least 10 years now. Despite these efforts, such groups are increasing in number. Al-Qaeda, as a concept, an organization, a set of activities and a set of individuals, has proven to be a contagious disease in many areas of the region. Explaining how we reached the point at which we find now ourselves will take a long time. Analyses of it will vary, as some will espouse a socio-political analysis describing it as a situation of rebellion, and others will contend that it is a normal product of the region’s tragedies. Some think it is the result of the local extremist intellect that feeds off the events occurring around it.

What is certain is that we are confronting an expanding phenomenon. The Al-Qaeda that brought down New York’s twin towers in 2001 only consisted of a few hundred members living in one country, Afghanistan. Today, it is an army of tens of thousands of fighters. It grew geographically from one country to around 10 countries where they now fight on a daily basis. Theories that linked the emergence of Al-Qaeda to foreign intervention and religious persecution were thus proven wrong. Al-Qaeda is spreading, and security measures are not the cure. The cure lies in both education and culture.

When the Saudi government decided to take a new measure and criminalized involvement in the region’s wars, it finalized an important part of the cultural controversy. Are the actions of a criminal regime, like that of President Bashar Al-Assad’s in Syria, justification for angry Saudi youths to board a plane and join the fight in support of the persecuted?

Extremist groups have managed to convince many that this is the individual’s duty and not the state’s. They appealed to the sentiment of the youth and transformed them into battalions ready to fight in any way that was demanded of them. These groups in effect hijacked their minds. Syria does not need them, as it is full of hundreds of thousands of Syrian youths who are fighting and who don’t need foreigners competing with them.

They don’t want Saudis, Libyans, Kuwaitis, Chechens or Muslim Europeans there on the ground. They want support from afar. In only one year, these volunteers succeeded in sabotaging the revolution, distorting its cause and ruining the Syrian social fabric. They were serving Assad’s regime and the Iranian regime instead of fighting against them. Some realized the damage done, but failed to admit it and instead turned against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), the extremist group operating in Syria, and started to fight it. This came after they had rallied around ISIS, praising their heroic acts. The perpetrators realized the name “ISIS” had a negative connotation, and they failed to defend it so they are now embellishing the image of other organizations similar to ISIS.

As for those obsessed with bloodshed, we can draw a clear picture of their political rhetoric throughout history. They began by supporting Afghanistan’s Taliban in the 1990s. Their support synchronized with calls to fight Serbs in the Balkans. Then they called for fighting the Americans in the Gulf and for expelling them from the Arabian Peninsula. Afterwards, they called on youths to fight the occupier in Iraq. Then there were calls to fight in Somalia. Now that the “American crusaders” have left Iraq, there are calls to fight the country’s Shi’ites. They are seeking to spread the idea of fighting Buddhists in Burma, fighting Houthis in Yemen, adopting jihad in central Africa and supporting what is happening in Libya as a war against the seculars.

Therefore, they don’t have a cause. It’s a sick state of mind being exploited by parties that have mastered the manipulation of these groups for decades. I know there are some who doubt the theory of the presence of an Iranian role in all this. However, there is a lot of information that proves the Iranians’ involvement via Lebanese, Syrian and Palestinian groups. Their fingerprints are everywhere chaos has reigned. I am not saying the Iranians are directly recruiting Saudis, Libyans and Egyptians, but they are turning angry, enthusiastic youths into a tool to serve a political agenda. They did it previously in Lebanon, the Gulf, Yemen and Sudan, and they are repeating it today. The phenomenon of fighting the world using our children has spiraled out of control. This problem must be solved by addressing the root causes, not the symptoms.