US fanned fires of Syrian war

THE US’s own involvement in the Syrian conflict is telling. Early in the civil war, the Obama administration expressed its conviction that Bashar al-Assad’s regime had to go. Given US antagonism towards Iran and its allies, this statement did not come as a surprise. The US offered nonlethal aid to the Syrian rebels and eventually covertly armed them, going so far as to operate a training camp for rebels in northern Jordan.

But the US didn’t appear to expand its direct support for the Syrian rebels beyond this point, and for good reason. When the Obama administration asked Congress for $500 million to train and equip “moderate rebels”, the Pentagon testified that it anticipated difficulties finding moderate fighters to train and arm. This means that they don’t really exist. With Isis’s victories in Iraq, the US strategy of fuelling the fire in Syria without allowing either side to win is revealing its contradictions.

No one is innocent in the Iraqi and Syrian civil wars, but Iran is not primarily responsible for the current state of affairs. The US and its allies destabilised Iraq and Syria in turn, creating safe havens for extremists that previously did not exist. US allies provided the material support that allowed Isis and groups like it to become threats to the entire region, despite lacking any substantial popular base in Syria and Iraq.

Iran and its regional allies are not the cause of Isis’s rapid rise. Extremist groups have been consistently aided by disastrous Western interventions in the Middle East. Responsibility for the rise of Isis isn’t much of a mystery: the West and its allies just have to look in the mirror. Westville, Durban