Jihadism: Understanding the Roots of the Middle Eastern Plight

One must go back 35 years to understand the importance of the transformation that Saudi Arabia - and perhaps the United States - are in the process of undergoing.

 

Since 1979, Washington, at the instigation of the National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski, decided to support political Islam against Soviet influence, reviving the policy adopted in Egypt to support the Muslim Brotherhood against Nasser.

 

Brzezinski decided to launch a major "Islamic revolution" from Afghanistan (then governed by the Communist regime of Muhammad Taraki) and Iran (where he himself organized the return of Imam Ruhollah Khomeini. Subsequently, this Islamic revolution was to spread throughout the Arab world and take with them the nationalist movements associated with the USSR.

 

The operation in Afghanistan was an unexpected success: the jihadists of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL) recruited Muslims and, led by the anti-Communist millionaire Osama Bin Laden Brothers, launched a military campaign that led the government to appeal to the Soviets. The Red Army entered Afghanistan and was bogged down there for five years, accelerating the fall of the USSR.

 

The operation in Iran was rather a disaster: Brzezinski was amazed to find that Khomeini was not the man he was told - an old Ayatollah trying to recover his estates confiscated by the Shah -, but a genuine anti-imperialist. Considering a little later that the word "Islamist" held not at all the same meaning for all, he decided to distinguish good Sunnis (collaborators) from the poor Shiites (anti-imperialist) and entrust the management of the former to Saudi Arabia.

 

Finally, considering the renewal of the alliance between Washington and the House of Saud, President Carter announced, during his speech on the State of the Union on January 23, 1980, that henceforth access to Gulf oil was a goal related to US national security.

 

Since then, jihadists were tasked with all the low blows against the Soviets (and Russians) and against nationalist or recalcitrant Arab regimes. The period running from the accusation against the jihadists of plotting and carrying out the attacks of Sept. 11 until the announcement of the alleged death of Osama bin Laden in Pakistan (2001-11) complicated matters. The idea was both to deny any relationship with jihadists and to use them as a pretext for interventions. Things have returned to clarity in 2011 with the formal collaboration between the jihadists and NATO in Libya and Syria.