Ahmed Rashid on Politics of Turmoil in the Muslim World

Ahmed Rashid, a renowned jour­nal­ist and author of best­selling “Tal­iban: Mil­i­tant Islam, Oil and Fun­da­men­tal­ism” spoke on the rise of ISIS, Yemen Cri­sis and their impact on Pak­istan in a talk host­ed by The Last Word. The Last Word is a cel­e­brat­ed book store in Lahore which, accord­ing to its Face­book page, caters to a ‘read­er­ship that thrives on ideas, cre­ativ­i­ty and explo­sive con­cepts’. Such talks and pub­lic events are a reg­u­lar fea­ture at The Last Word which has soon estab­lished itself as a pop­u­lar venue for Lahore’s literati. Attend­ed by a house full of around 70 peo­ple, the hour long can­did talk was fol­lowed by ques­tions and answers ses­sion.

“Rise of ISIS is not a sur­prise for me”

Start­ing with the his­to­ry and gen­e­sis of ISIS, Ahmed Rashid assert­ed, “The birth of ISIS and their swift esca­la­tion is not a sur­prise for me as it is the out­come of a high­ly desta­bi­lized Iraq, crip­pled by vio­lence and wars.”He fur­ther attrib­uted the long stand­ing insur­gency and the huge pow­er vac­u­um in Iraq as the key fac­tors giv­ing birth to ISIS.

Iraq grew to be the nucle­us of ter­ror­ism after the Amer­i­can inva­sion which soon begot large scale sec­tar­i­an vio­lence, and ter­ror­ism owing to Al-Qaida’s pres­ence. The vio­lence and mar­gin­al­iza­tion suf­fered by a num­ber of groups pro­vid­ed the con­text which thrives rad­i­cal­iza­tion and ter­ror­ism. The ISIS came as a nat­ur­al cul­mi­na­tion of these cir­cum­stances, he opined.

ISIS, accord­ing to Ahmed Rashid, was born out of Al-Qaeda.It was after the death of al-Zar­qawi, al-Qaida’s head in Iraq, in 2006 that ISIS’s for­ma­tion was declared under the lead­er­ship of Abu Omar al-Bagh­da­di, the pre­de­ces­sor of cur­rent emir of ISIS known as Abu Bakr al-Bagh­da­di.

Al-Qai­da and ISIS

Speak­ing on the sim­i­lar­i­ties between ISIS & Al-Qai­da, Rashid point­ed out that in terms of ide­ol­o­gy there is not much of a difference.In terms of strat­e­gy, how­ev­er, they are poles apart. ISIS believes in cap­tur­ing the ter­ri­to­ry and estab­lish­ing a caliphate in what­ev­er form, which then be used as a base for fur­ther expan­sion and fight­ing the ene­mies of Islam. Al-Qai­da, on the oth­er hand, believes in fight­ing US and oth­er per­ceived ene­mies of Islam, and sees the estab­lish­ment of Caliphate as the long-term objec­tive.

Answer­ing a ques­tion on ISIS’s stance on Pales­tine issue, Rashid high­light­ed that inter­est­ing­ly ISIS is vir­tu­al­ly silent on Pales­tine and nev­er chal­lenges Israel’s hege­mo­ny. On the con­trary, Pales­tin­ian refugee camps in Syr­ia fre­quent­ly become vic­tims of ISIS’s cru­el­ties.

ISIS: A look inside the cadre

“The hier­ar­chy of ISIS is com­prised of sev­er­al ex-offi­cers of Saddam’s Army, along with Uzbek, Tajik and Chechen fight­ers. They are all pro­fes­sion­al­ly trained jiha­di mil­i­tants,” told Rashid.

About 25,000 recruits from 90 dif­fer­ent coun­tries have joined ISIS in the last cou­ple of years, which is rough­ly equal to one thou­sand recruits per month.ISIS’s num­bers have mul­ti­plied expo­nen­tial­ly in no time. Young peo­ple from Britain, France, and aston­ish­ing­ly, from all over Europe are rush­ing to join ISIS. Anoth­er ele­ment which dis­tin­guish­es ISIS from oth­er jiha­di mili­tias is their suc­cess in attract­ing female recruits, explained Rashid while talk­ing about trac­tion for ISIS.

ISIS is cur­rent­ly the rich­est ter­ror­ist group on the plan­et. They are con­trol­ling near­ly 50 oil wells and fur­ther using smug­gling and kid­nap­ping for ran­som to gen­er­ate rev­enue. They are also employ­ing thou­sands of women and young girls in sex­u­al slav­ery. They are earn­ing a mil­lion to two mil­lion dol­lars a day which makes them the spear­head of ter­ror­ism in the world. Al-Qae­da nev­er achieved any­thing like this.I think we are going to wit­ness fur­ther spread of the ISIS, said Rashid whilst com­ment­ing on the grav­i­ty of the sit­u­a­tion.

“Media manip­u­la­tion paved way for the suc­cess of ISIS”

Explain­ing the motives of the ISIS and their tech­niques of media manip­u­la­tion, Rashid explained that ISIS not only wants to abol­ish the bor­ders between Iraq and Syr­ia, they want the expan­sion of their Khi­lafat by all means. Unlike Al-Qae­da, ISIS believes in exter­mi­nat­ing all minori­ties resid­ing in the areas under their control.They are doing mass killings, behead­ings, sui­cide bomb­ings and major ter­ror­ist attacks not just in Iraq and Syr­ia but in places like Jor­dan and recent­ly, in Sau­di Ara­bia.

After expung­ing all oth­er media sources which could expose their activ­i­ties and where­abouts, ISIS choose them­selves what and how they want to show to the rest of the world. They have been using footages of behead­ings and bomb­ings for fear and pro­pa­gan­da. The online pro­pa­gan­da had a mas­sive impact on the rad­i­cal­ized youth all over the world.

The Yemen Con­flict

“Yemen is in a state of civ­il war for the last five years”, said Rashid. Com­ment­ing on the sec­tar­i­an facet of the con­flict, he was of the view that it is not main­ly a proxy war. Because of doc­tri­nal dif­fer­ences, Iran may not con­sid­er Houthis as prop­er Shia. Houthis have been mar­gin­al­ized in the post-Saleh polit­i­cal set­up which led to their revolt against the regime.

“Yemen has 95 mil­lion guns for 25 mil­lion peo­ple”

Rashid said that Yemen is cur­rent­ly the most armed coun­try in the world. With a pop­u­la­tion of about 25 mil­lion, there are 90 mil­lion guns in Yemen. In such a heav­i­ly armed coun­try with trib­al alle­giances, poor gov­er­nance and infra­struc­ture, very cau­tious mea­sures need to be tak­en to address the Yemen cri­sis. Unfor­tu­nate­ly there has been no seri­ous diplo­mat effort on Yemen so far.

What is the rest of Mus­lim world doing?

Rashid said that the Arab coun­tries and their lack of lead­er­ship is quin­tes­sen­tial­ly result­ing in the spread of ISIS. The Amer­i­cans and oth­er West­ern coun­tries are tak­ing steps against the orga­ni­za­tion which should have been a task com­plet­ed by the Arab coun­tries.

“The 60 state alliance against ISIS should have been led by the Arab coun­tries rather than Amer­i­ca”, Rashid lament­ed.

Talk­ing final­ly about Pak­istan, he said, “Pak­istan did the right thing by not send­ing it troops to Yemen”. The sit­u­a­tion in Yemen is far too com­plex to be han­dled through mil­i­tary oper­a­tion. Only diplo­mat­ic effort and polit­i­cal solu­tion has the answer.

Com­ment­ing on the pos­si­bil­i­ty ISIS’s upsurge in Pak­istan, Rashid said that the kind of vac­u­um ISIS requires to grow is not there yet.

Rashid was warm­ly appre­ci­at­ed by the echo­ing applause in the end of the talk and he thanked all his lis­ten­ers for show­ing inter­est