These days nobody is taken aback anymore by the opportunistic statements the sitting American president has been making for the last couple of years. If Donald Trump is to be believed, all of the most challenging problems the international community is facing these days can be resolved with a single stroke of the pen.
Among those alleged attempts to resolve complex international issues was his decision to recognize Israel’s sovereignty over the Golan Heights territory, the strip of land that belongs to Syria but remains occupied by Tel-Aviv. However, he was inclined to make this step was in direct violation of a number of UN resolutions, as if the international law would cease to exist overnight.
Moreover, Trump would repeatedly claim that the Pentagon is proceeding with the reduction of the number of US troops illegally deployed to Syria, while their actual number remains unchanged.
In a similar fashion, the sitting US president would repeatedly claim that Washington managed to secure a complete victory over the terrorist organization known as ISIS. Yet another such statement was presented to the world on March 20, when Trump announced that the last enclave held in Syria by Islamist forces was about to be liberated by the forces of the US-backed paramilitary organization known as the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF). However, the SDF detachments that were facing ISIS in the area of the Baghuz village in eastern Syria would rebuke these claims on the following day.
In order to make an objective evaluation of Trump’s repeated statements, let’s draw a clear picture of the events that are taking place in the ongoing Washington’s alleged struggle against ISIS militants.
It’s hardly a secret that for those people in Washington that were entrusted with the project of the “Greater Middle East” and “Greater Afghanistan”, ISIS is nothing but a lever of Western influence on the processes occurring across multiple regions, including Central and Southeast Asia. Thus, in its shape and form ISIS is the spiritual successor of yet another instrument of Washington’s foreign policy – the terrorist organization known as Al-Qaeda. However, both of these terrorist organizations have undergone a significant change in the manner that they operate and the goals they try to secure, primarily because of the increasing role Russia, in close cooperation with Turkey and Iran, starts playing at the forefront of the actual struggle against terrorism.
Under these conditions, the US would try to relocate the terrorists it’s allegedly at war with to those distant countries that remain out of Russia’s reach to ensure their survival. Among such states Russia is incapable of providing military assistance to one can find, among others, Afghanistan. If we are to believe an approximate evaluation presented by US intelligence agencies, some 350-400 thousand militants at some point in time took part in armed hostilities under the black banner of this terrorist group. At the same time, according to some reports, the actual losses this group suffered in both KIA and capture reaches no more than 80 thousand people. Under these circumstances one cant’ help but wonder: where are the remaining 300 thousand militants?
The answer to this puzzle is rather simple and lies on the surface. The better part of those fighting for ISIS were professional mercenaries who arrived to Syria from all across the world, including a number of Western states. Those people that would be advertised in the Western media as die-hard religious fanatics were, in essence, nothing but hired guns. For sure, some of those ISIS militants were young men from the Middle East, North Africa, Central Asia, the Caucasus, who fell victims of the poisonous indoctrination by radical forces. This process was further aggravated by the deterioration of the economic situation and soaring poverty in those countries that fell victims to Washington’s economic or military aggression.
However, we should not forget that since ISIS was nothing by an operation launched by American intelligence agencies, the core of this militant group was built from agents of foreign intelligence services whose main goal was to take down the states of the Greater Middle East and bring Afghanistan to Washington’s heel. In essence, they pursued decentralization of power with consequent disintegration of the major regional player states, which would create preconditions for the infiltration of the territories of Russia and Iran.
As for the macho statements that Donald Trump keeps on making about the utter and complete defeat that ISIS suffered, this is nothing but attempts to misinform the general public. For instance, those parts of ISIS that were financed supported by Saudi Arabia are still operating in the Middle East and are still being chased and destroyed, but those Western agents who were tasked with the goal of implementing the project of the “Greater Middle East” project are now actively withdrawing their forces from the region.
Former terrorists are now returning to the sort of life they led before invading Syria in Germany, Turkey, Africa, Central Asia, etc. They work in institutes, schools, in private companies, but in fact they are nothing but sleeper cells that can unleash destruction on most any state of this world once they’re summoned by their masters – Western intelligence agencies.
As for American intelligence agencies, they refrained from actively withdrawing their agents from ISIS-affiliated structures in the Levant, as they are transferring them to Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The fact that the United States is preparing a new conspiracy with the participation of ISIS is highlighted by the recent publication in Turkey’s Yeni Safak. In particular, this media source noted that in the areas protected by the Pentagon forces in Syria, US intelligence services are hand picking militants for the transfer to the secret CIA gathering center in Abu Hash. Representatives of the Israeli, French and British intelligence agencies also visit the interrogation centers created by the CIA for the militants operating in Syria. Those militants that make the cut for the new campaign are presented with new IDs and then transferred to Iraq to be flown out of the region by US air force.
Therefore, it is not surprising that now these militants are capable of moving freely across Europe and those areas that are not controlled by the central government of Afghanistan, especially in the border regions that adjacent to Pakistan and Iran.
In Europe, the main task of these people is to carry on the destabilization attempts made against those countries that are not showing explicit obedience to Washington through all sorts of political manifestations, including the so-called yellow vests movement in France.
In Central Asia, they are required to inflict maximum damage on Russia and Iran. However, they have the ultimate goal of running away with western regions of China and the consolidation of the territory of Central Asia under black banners.
The Syrian war has shown us that those terrorists will never experience any shortage of weapons or funds for their operations due to the tacit support they receive from the West, so they represent a real threat. Somehow, those forces didn’t face any logistics, crisis, while establishing the highly efficient transportation and distribution network behind-the-lines.
Therefore, once ISIS is fully operational in Afghanistan it will have all the weapons and equipment needed for protracted engagements in mountainous areas and in urban environments, and one should have no doubt about that.
In recent times, several terrorist attacks have already taken place in Afghanistan, that resulted in human casualties. Many analysts describe the current situation in Afghanistan as increasingly unstable. So every time Donald Trump claims that ISIS has been defeated, you can be rest assured that you haven’t seen anything yet.
Martin Berger is a freelance journalist and geopolitical analyst, exclusively for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook.”
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