QATAR AND TURKEY ARE NEW SPONSORS OF RADICAL IDEOLOGY, SAYS MCMASTER
US national security adviser attributes rise of Justice and Development Party to Turkey’s problems with the West
The US national security adviser, H R McMaster, condemned Qatar and Turkey for taking on a “new role” as the main sponsors and sources of funding for extremist Islamist ideology that targets western interests.
“Radical Islamist ideology is obviously a grave threat to all civilised people,” Gen McMaster said.
He said this threat has been identified myopically in the past.
“We didn’t pay enough attention to how it [radical Islamist ideology] is being advanced through charities, madrasas and other social organisations.”
While Gen McMaster made reference to Saudi Arabia’s support for some of these organisations decades ago, he singled out Qatar and Turkey as the main supporters at present. “[It] is now done more by Qatar, and by Turkey,” he said.
He said Turkey’s growing problems with the West were largely a result of the rise of the Justice and Development Party, to which president Recep Tayyip Erdogan belongs.
In a rare public policy appearance with his British counterpart, Mark Sedwill, at an event hosted by the Policy Exchange think tank in Washington, Gen McMaster revealed that US president Donald Trump will roll out his latest national security strategy on Monday.
Four “vital national interests” would be prioritised in the new approach to address national security challenges.
These are protecting the homeland and American people, advancing American prosperity, preserving peace through strength and advancing American influence.
The US army general, who was appointed the National Security Adviser in February, said the approach would contest three big threats to US interests globally.
Two of these have had a major impact on the Middle East.
China and Russia are viewed by the White House “as revisionist powers” encroaching on US allies and undermining the international order. Another tier of danger was described as rogue regimes, such as Iran and North Korea, which “support terror and are seeking weapons of mass destruction”.
The third threat came from radical extremist Islamist organisations.
Gen McMaster called himself a big fan of the review conducted by former British diplomat Sir John Jenkins in 2015 about the issue.
The review – which the UK government did not make public – is believed to warn of the threat of political Islam.
He said the Trump administration is committed to countering extremist ideologies and funding, and referred to the new centre established during the US president’s visit to Saudi Arabia.
It is a “big problem when Islamist radical ideology bridges into political Islam”, he said.
While stressing not all the Muslim Brotherhood branches were alike, he urged the building of opposition groups that respect individual freedoms, to avoid another “Morsi model”, in reference to the former Egyptian president overthrown in 2013.
Gen McMaster said that the Brotherhood operated clandestinely and monopolised opposition after the street upheavals and fall of Hosni Mubarak in 2011.
The other model that Gen McMaster identified with the Brotherhood is Turkey’s AKP. “By operating through civil society, they consolidate power through one party, sadly it is a problem contributing to Turkey’s drift from the West,” he said.
On Iran, Gen McMaster described the government in Tehran as a “rogue regime also and a revisionist regional power”.
He said: “We need to counter destabilising activity, especially in Syria,” as well as blocking support for its proxies and its paths to nuclear weapons.
He also advocated looking for sanctions outside the nuclear deal and abandoning the Barack Obama approach that made the deal itself a focal point of the strategy towards Iran.
Gen McMaster ended the conversation abruptly by saying: “I have a phone call I absolutely have to take”, but only after emphasising that the US is not seeking regime change in North Korea.
“That’s not our policy. What we are emphasising is the denuclearisation of the peninsula,” he said.
Radical Islamist ideology is obviously a grave threat to all civilised people GEN HR McMASTER US national security adviser