by The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff
Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among the most active supporters of the armed opposition seeking to topple Syrian President Bashar Assad, are now part of the coalition that appears to be helping him militarily, even if unintentionally.
Jordan hopes to use radical
al-Qaida-linked preacher Abu Qatada (center right) and jihadi ideologue
Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi (center left) as assets in containing the spread
of Islamic State in the country
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Photo credit: AP  |
On a recent evening, two of Jordan's top
pro-al-Qaida ideologues held court on the rooftop of a villa decorated
with strings of lights. Sporting shaggy beards and robes, the Muslim
preachers whispered to each other and rose occasionally from plastic
chairs to greet supporters.
It would have been hard to picture such a
scene just a few months ago, with Abu Qatada and Abu Mohammed al-Maqdisi
then being held in Jordanian prisons on security charges. But Jordan's
priorities appear to have shifted because of the mounting threat posed
by the Islamic State group, an al-Qaida offshoot that has seized large
areas of neighboring Syria and Iraq, sending shivers through the
kingdom.
Abu Qatada and al-Maqdisi have denounced some
of the group's practices as un-Islamic -- comments some analysts say
have turned the preachers into assets in Jordan's campaign to contain
the Islamic State, which is believed to have attracted thousands of
followers in the country. Authorities say their release from prison --
al-Maqdisi in June and Abu Qatada after an acquittal last week -- had
nothing to do with politics.
But the clerics' outspokenness points to one
of many ways in which the rise of the Islamic State group is upending
old assumptions in the Middle East.
At the core of the issue: the group is viewed
by some regional players as an existential threat and the fight against
it has created an unlikely mix of allies and reshaped regional
priorities.
Longtime foes such as the United States and
Iran now find themselves fighting a common enemy, as do Iraq's Arabs and
Kurds -- who rarely agree on much. Squabbling Arab states, such as
Qatar and its Gulf neighbors, have at least temporarily put aside their
differences in the fight against the militants.
One-time rivals "view the Islamic State
through a similar lens, that it represents a threat to their national
security interests," said Fawaz Gerges, a London-based expert on Islamic
movements.
"This tells you the extent to which the Islamic State has really reconfigured regional security and global security," he added.
The coalition has quickly grown since the U.S.
first launched airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq on Aug.
8, followed by bombardments in Syria that began Sept. 21.
Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates,
Bahrain and Jordan have participated in attacks in Syria, while Qatar
hosts an air base used by the coalition. France, the Netherlands,
Denmark, Belgium and Britain are among European countries contributing
to U.S. efforts to hit the Islamic State group in Iraq.
President Barack Obama acknowledged that U.S.
intelligence agencies underestimated the threat from Islamic State
militants in the Middle East and overestimated the ability and will of
Iraq's army to fight such extremists.
Obama described the U.S. intelligence
assessments in response to a question during a CBS "60 Minutes"
interview broadcast Sunday. Obama also conceded that the U.S.-led
military campaign in Syria was helping Syrian dictator Bashar Assad, a
man the U.N. has accused of war crimes.
But Obama said he had no choice but to order
U.S. airstrikes on Assad's enemies, including the Islamic State, because
"those folks could kill Americans."
Just a year ago, the Obama administration
appeared on the verge of striking government targets in Syria after
blaming Assad for a deadly chemical weapons attack on rebel-held areas
outside Damascus.
Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Muallem said
Monday his government is satisfied with the U.S.-led bombing campaign,
but that airstrikes should be expanded to include all other militant
groups in Syria.
In an interview with The Associated Press,
al-Muallem said the fight has aligned Damascus with its Western and Arab
opponents in confronting the same enemy.
"We are fighting ISIS, they are fighting ISIS," he said, referring to the group by one of its acronyms.
Saudi Arabia and Qatar, among the most active
supporters of the armed opposition seeking to topple Assad, are now part
of the coalition that appears to be helping him militarily, even if
unintentionally. How long they are willing to do so is unclear.
Qatar's participation in the coalition is
significant. It has been under mounting political pressure over its
backing of Islamist groups such as the Muslim Brotherhood, its ties with
Hamas, which fought a 50-day war with Israel this summer, and for not
doing more to stamp out private funding for extremist groups.
It now finds itself allied with three Gulf
neighbors who pulled their ambassadors from the country earlier this
year to protest Qatar's perceived regional meddling and support for
Islamists. While the diplomats haven't been formally reinstated, it
appears the Islamic State threat is now a more pressing concern.
"This is helping to push the GCC [alliance of
six Gulf states] together against the Sunni extremists in Syria," said
Theodore Karasik, an analyst at the Dubai-based Institute for Near East
and Gulf Military Analysis.
Jordanian government spokesman Mohammad al-Momani predicted a long fight against the Islamic State militants.
"They have been trying to infiltrate into our
borders, and therefore the threat is there," he said. "We will continue
until we achieve our objective of degrading and finishing the terrorist
organization."
The new counterterrorism fight isn't prompting
the Obama administration to ease efforts against other long-term
threats to the United States. Washington is still pushing for a nuclear
deal with Iran and targeting the financing of Hezbollah and Hamas.
But shifting the priority to destroying the
Islamic State group is creating new opportunities for indirect
collaboration, even with sworn enemies.
U.S. and Iranian officials have held discussions on counteracting the Sunni extremists, although they deny direct cooperation.
In a sign of the overlap of Iranian and U.S.
interests, Iran last week said one of the Islamic Republic's most senior
generals and 70 Iranian soldiers helped Kurdish fighters defend Irbil,
the capital of the autonomous Kurdish region in northern Iraq that has
been a focus of the American military. The city is home to a U.S.
consulate and offices of numerous Western companies, and the approach of
Islamic State militants to its outskirts prompted American airstrikes
in August.
Lebanon's powerful, Iranian-backed Shiite
Hezbollah militia has used the threat posed by the Islamic State to
justify fighting in Syria, alongside Assad's forces. After sending
fighters to Syria last year, Hezbollah had faced mounting criticism at
home that it was dragging the country into the civil war there.
Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah now argues
that Hezbollah's actions have prevented Islamic State militants from
overrunning Lebanon.
The new regional climate also helped refocus
Egypt's relations with the West on the issue of terrorism, a
conversation that Egyptian President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi appears more
comfortable with than Washington's concerns about human rights
violations resulting from his domestic crackdown on the Muslim
Brotherhood.
Sissi deposed an elected president from the
Brotherhood last year and has tried to portray his move against the
group as a model for fighting terrorism. Washington remains critical of
Cairo, but observers believe the ties between the two are improving.
Some in the Arab coalition say they are engaged in an existential battle.
"What we are fighting is not just a terrorist
organization, but the embodiment of a malicious ideology that must be
defeated intellectually," the vice president and prime minister of the
Emirates, Dubai ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, wrote in an
opinion piece Sunday.
"I consider this ideology to be the greatest danger that the world will face in the next decade," he said.
The Associated Press and Israel Hayom Staff
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_article.php?id=20431
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
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