Why Cameron is Prepared to Extend British Air Strikes into Syria.

“There is nothing token about this, quite the contrary. They need our help, not just with the Tornados flying daily from Cyprus, but also from the surveillance equipment overhead – to add to the operations of the Iraqi and Kurdish forces. We need to think about how we beat IS. IS is based in Syria and IS needs to be defeated in Syria as well as in Iraq.” -Defence Minister Michael Fallon

“If there was the need to take urgent action, for instance to prevent the massacre of a minority community or a Christian community, I would order that and come to the House to explain immediately afterwards.”

'I have said we support what the Americans and the five Arab nations have done in Syria. We have a Syria strategy which is to build up the Free Syrian Army [and] the Syrian National Coalition to achieve a political transition in Syria'-Prime Minister David Cameron

Cameron would prefer to extend British strikes into Syria to help overcome the humiliation of the summer of 2013 when Parliament rejected Cameron's desired war to take out Assad over the alleged chemical gas attack on Ghouta. The geopolitical strategy remained unchanged since then.

Cameron backed Qatar and Turkey's plan to train and back Sunni jihadists to overthrow Assad just as he had led with Hollande in pushing for the NATO intervention to back the insurgents in Libya and get rid of Gaddafi. The ambition was a democratic Libya amenable to French and British energy interests.

Syria after 2011 was no different with France and Britain supporting Qatari policy in backing the SNC and so turning a blind eye to Doha's support for Sunni jihadists as a means justifying the end of removing the 'brutal dictator' and thus securing western influence in the Levant.

Energy interests and the special relationship with Qatar were paramount no matter how risky the strategy was. In common with Turkey, both Britain and France want Assad to go so that the offshore gas reserves would not be conceded to Russia as they subsequently were in December 2013.

Russia upped the stakes after it concluded a 25 year deal with Assad to develop Syria's gas. These lie in an offshore field 850 square miles of Syria's Exclusive Economic Zone in an area called Block 2 which is positioned the coastal cities of Banias and Tartous where Russia has a naval base.

These reserves of the Levant were discovered in 2010. Turkey subsequently backed the opposition to Assad as part of its neo-Ottoman strategy as a means to increase its influence in Syria and benefit from the fossil fuel reserves it lacks in partnership with gas rich Qatar by backing Sunni militant forces.

With Putin copying Turkish tactics in backing insurgents across its borders in Ukraine to advance geopolitical ambitions in the Black Sea region and successfully gain control over energy transit routes, the need to knock out ISIS and then Assad to check Russian influence in the Eastern Mediterranean has intensified.

Cameron made plain that he support the Gulf states interests, no matter their support for terrorism, by accusing Iran and Assad of doing the same. Indeed, Cameron recycled SNC and Qatari propaganda in Parliament on Friday 26th about Assad being the main sponsor of ISIS through buying its oil.

In fact, the oil revenues accrued by ISIS are mostly from sales of oil via Turkey, Britain's stalwart NATO ally through channels and illegal pipelines set up for the export of black market oil dating back to the 1990s when Saddam was firmly in charge in Baghdad. Officials in Turkey's deep state are said to be profiting.

ISIS funds mostly come from Turkey and not from Damascus which has no interest in funding an organisation based in Syria in a nation where 60% of the population is Sunni, if not Sunni Arab, and his own government is dominated by Alawis and supported by minorities wanting protection from Sunni militants.

Cameron's insistence on supporting the SNC and FSA as an alternative to Assad and ISIS simply is not credible. Nor is it meant as anything other than a determination to continue with the foreign policy of backing Qatar and its strategies no matter the risks because the stakes are access to oil and gas.

Cameron's ambition is to see ISIS destroyed and to then use the renewed pretext for intervention in Syria to erase the humiliation of his thwarted quest to remove Assad in 2013. This is far more a vital interest for Britain ( and France ) than it is for the US for a number of reasons.

Firstly, Qatar and Turkey sought the removal of Assad to get a Qatar-Turkey gas pipeline from the south Pars gas field through to the Mediterranean where it would then by exported through to EU markets. Even before the Ukraine conflict, energy diversification away from Russia was a geopolitical goal.

Secondly, Qatar is set to become a major exporter of LNG to Britain as North Sea gas declines. This was made plain by energy minister Michael Fallon in 2013 when he lauded both that an the 10 billion pounds investment Qatar was due to make in upgrading the UK's infrastructure.

Cameron was prepared to engage diplomatically with Iran's Rouhahi over Iraq but he demonstrated repellent hypocrisy in emphasising Iran's support for terrorism as one reason it unlike Qatar which backs Sunni jihadists across the region ( including the Taliban ) could be no an ally. Assad is regarded as a pariah.

The reason has all to do with fawning on Qatar so as to strike up a special relationship whereby Britain assists in asserting its regional interests militarily and in being pledged to defend its interests so as to get LNG and lucative arms deals. Hammond has even talked up the possibility of a military base in Qatar.

With Libya having fallen into chaos and the conflict in Eastern Ukraine going on, the Eastern Mediterranean and Persian Gulf are regions where Britain and France could source extra supplies of energy. The spread and surge of ISIS and the need to fight them as a 'global threat' are a consequence of energy geopolitics.

The so called 'moderate rebels' are miniscule and the FSA in September 2014 is, as Patrick Cockburn points out, little more than a CIA led outfit awaiting funds and new recruits to make it some third force between Assad and ISIS ( which is absurdly unrealistic and futile ).

Cameron seems intent on persisting with this mythical moderate Sunni force because of energy interests. It's both ruthless and inept as a foreign policy strategy but, then again, those two adjectives define Cameron and his neoconservative government.

Why the Caliphate could be Established in the Middle East.

'The declaration by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the leader of this new entity, that he is the supreme authority of a new "caliphate" makes it easy to portray the Islamic State as a reactionary throwback. But this is an error. Baghdadi's vision is profoundly contemporary.

It is also a radical break with the strategic vision of previous militant leaders. Political Islamists such as the Muslim Brotherhood and their offshoots have long talked of appropriating institutions and power, by a variety of means ranging from peaceful social activism to a violent coup d'etat, but never about creating a new state.

What Baghdadi has done is fuse the political Islamists' aim of seizing state power with the neo-traditionalists' more global vision to create a recognisable if rough-edged state that is simultaneously supposed to be a launchpad for greater expansion. This unprecedented combination is a powerful one' The Isis leader's vision of the state is a profoundly contemporary one, Jason Burke, The Observer, August 24 2014.

Jason Burke is the most able of all those writing on Al Qaida and ISIS. The new Caliphate is dynamic and modern, a combination of Al Qaida's emphasis on the purifying potential of spectacular violence to remake and reimagine the world and the 'charitable' state functions of the Taliban of Afghanistan.

The difference between Afghanistan in the 1990s and the new Caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq is the way IS has captured major oil installations and selling oil to gain up to $1m a day in revenues. As such it can put the wealth towards benefitting alienated Sunni Arabs in both Syria and Iraq.

The other long term factor favouring an expansionist warlike Caliphate, apart from the supply of money from shadowy Gulf donors and men identifying with jihadism from around the globe, is climate change. Put bluntly and bleakly, the Fertile Crescent which long sustained life in the region is dying.

One reason for the outbreak of the Syrian conflict in 2011 was a combination of higher food and fuel prices and several failed harvests which affected the Sunni Muslim communities the worst. With the collapse of state authority and the chaos created by war, the most ruthless jihadists of IS could flourish.

Assad tried to use control over water as a means to quell Sunni unrest. IS is copying that tactic in trying to control the Mosul Dam in Iraq. The 2003 invasion made an appalling system that was collapsing in Iraq even worse than it was and, combined with drought and crop failure, exacerbated Sunni militancy.

An article in Slate Magazine made plain the longer term factors destabilising both Syria and Iraq,

'The United Nations lists Iraq as “one of the Arab region’s most vulnerable countries to climate change.” In 2004, just after the American-led regime change, a Congressional Research Service report cited “rapid population growth coupled with limited arable land” and “a general stagnation of agricultural productivity” after decades of conflict and mismanagement during the final Saddam years as the main reasons Iraq grew more reliant on imports of food amid international sanctions and the oil-for-food program. A major drought from 1999-2001 also hampered the country’s ability to feed itself. Since then, conflict has raged and the climate has grown even more extreme, with alternating severe droughts and heavy rainstorms'.

The River Euphrates and the Tigris are drying up. Overpopulation relative to resources, and large numbers of unemployed young males, necessarily means the temptation towards violent jihad of IS as a means towards salvation and survival against the rival claims to diminishing water, land and, of course, oil.

IS is an expansionist Caliphate by nature or it is going to be nothing. With the shadowy proxy wars between the regional powers going on, IS could be useful to those wanting to check Iranian ambitions so long as it does not threaten to much to break out and menace Saudi Arabia.

With the Kurdish region, with its better organised government oil and water from the mountains headed towards independence, the battle for Baghdad would intensify and go on for coming decades ahead in a new epoch of semi-permanent chaos and technological barbarism.

The Call of the Caliphate in Britain: Why British Jihadists Fight in Syria.

The rise of IS in Syria and Iraq and the evident barbarity it revels in, from social media depictions of  enemies being machine gunned into open death pits, the beheading American journalists and threatening to exterminate or convert Christians and killing Yazidis, has caused some to be 'bewildered'.

Yvonne Ridley certainly claims to be 'baffled'. When asked about ISIS, Respect Party member and Islamist propaganda hack opined, as if knowing her exact stance was going to be a matter of pressing public importance in Britain,

'There are many reasons why I've not spoken out against ISIS. For a start, I'm not sure who it is, where it came from or how it is funded. I've not seen such a militarily- and strategically-savvy fighting force emerge in the Middle East before, other than the highly disciplined and much feared Hezbollah. I, like many others, want to know a little bit more about ISIS before making public comments'

So Ridley wasted hundreds of words 'taking her stance' and switching the topic to Israel half way through when IS has nothing to do with Israel. For someone who, like George Galloway, is a champion of Hizbollah it's odd that she so clearly wants President Assad removed when Hizbollah is a staunch ally of Assad.

The laughable thing about Ridley is that Galloway, the Respect MP for Bradford West, is actually a strong backer of Assad against the Sunni jihadists ranged against him, mostly because of the idea that the US created ISIS by supporting Sunni militant fighters against the Alawite Shia dynasty Assad belongs to.

Ridley cannot resist a conspiracy theory though. One of the most popular is that ISIS is part of a devious plot by the US and Israel to 'destabilise' Iraq ( as if it was not unstable enough without the US intervening once more in Iraq ), part of a CIA/ Mossad scheme to divide and rule Iraq against Iran.

Ridley has an alternatibe plot scenario 'The former head of the British Army says that the West should sit down and negotiate with Assad to get rid of ISIS, but what if ISIS was created by Assad and his ally Iran, which has members of the elite Republican Guard in parts of Syria?'

'As crazy as it sounds, that would explain why Nouri Al-Maliki's Iraqi army fell away so easily in the face of ISIS leaving behind a massive arsenal of weapons for the militia to use. It is virtually inconceivable for a trained fighting force to leave all of its kit behind before doing a runner, just as it's virtually inconceivable that a crack fighting force like ISIS could emerge from a rag tag bunch of ill-disciplined rebel fighters buoyed-up by disaffected youngsters from Europe and beyond'.

It sounds insane because it is insane and has no basis in reality. However, if the task is to try to rationalise away the depth and extent to which the Islamic State is a direct reflection of a strand of Islamist thinking and practice, then it is clear that Ridley would want to pretend ISIS has no basis in the world view she holds.

Mona Siddiqui, a professor of Islamic studies and public understanding at the University of Glasgow, writes on British jihadists in Syria that 'we in the west feel bewildered by their ferocity and brutality' and then goes on to write, a very uneasy way, the following,

'In the UK, the fear that Isis have attracted hundreds of British men to fight in the region has reignited the question of integration and radicalisation among younger British Muslims. But perhaps what is more chilling this time is the way many of these men, who have gone over to fight, have unflinchingly assumed the role of thug and tyrant given the first opportunity....Their narrative may well be wrapped up in the familiar language of jihad and "fighting in the cause of Allah", but it amounts to little more than destruction of anything and anyone who doesn't agree with them'.

This is obfuscation again. The barbarism of British jihadists comes from the ideology and is reinforced by the barbarism of war. This experience leads them towards enacting a  greater depravity that was within them as a consequence of the ideology that firstly allowed them to rationalise the impulse towards killing and death.

The fact 'John the Jihadist' beheaded the American journalist is hardly surprising: it is meant to be shocking but it's not if the purpose of the murder is understood, that there is a 'method to the madness' and that it lies within the need to use a maximum of terror to instill submission or awe in the enemy.

The demonstration of ISIS savagery is meant to show that this is a form of revenge for the war that the US and the West started against the Muslim World, to make plain that these sorts of killings are an inevitable consequence of Western foreign policy just as much as Lee Rigby's murder in London was.

So Siddiqui has ignored the deep emotional appeal of ISIS's ideology to obfuscate the role of Islamist discourse within Britain, a form of 'political religion' that indeed does pit a "purified" and purifying version of Islam against both the West and its legacy through secular leaders and the West's allies in the region.

The irony is that IS has gained ground because of its finance came from private donors in Kuwait, Qatar and Saudi Arabia as part of a quest to defeat the Shia Alawite Syrian leader Assad. Now they make money from illegal oil sales and robbing banks. It's a combination of gangsterism and deranged ideology.

But the West and anything associated with it in the Middle East are thus Infidels ( e.g the Christians being subjected or slaughtered ) and or else Hypocrites and both are targets for the foot soldiers of IS. This appeals to young British Islamists who regard the West as the root cause of all global problems.

To a certain extent, this idea is propagated by non-Islamist organisations that eschew the complexity of world politics and reduce complicated problems down to the idea the West is the Big Evil , the demonic 'system' that needs to be fought against until its power is destroyed.

The so called 'anti-war' movement in the form of the Stop the War Coalition is actually a front for revolutionary activists who would regard IS as wholly a product and reaction to Western Imperialism: whether Al Qaida operatives or IS foot soldiers all are denied an agency of their own.

It is this denial of moral responsibility that enables radicalised militant Islamists to regard themselves romantically as dark avenging angels, committed to kill not because they have bloodlust but because the sheer iniquity of the Western dominated world order evil made them do it.

There's a need to face facts. IS reflects a 'retrograde discourse' within Islam as regards the Caliphate, an idea that acts as a sort of ideological utopia for alienated Sunni Muslims and that in Syria and Iraq has gained ground because of the weakness of state authority in the northern parts of both lands.

ISIS has realised a Caliphate that has transcended the boundaries created by the France and Britain back in 1916. The reason semi-educated Islamists without ego security went to Syria to fight is because it offers a strength of purpose and certainty, freedom from the meaningless freedom of the West.

In the large cities and conurbations of Western Europe, there is no formative experience and no experience of membership beyond consumerism and the identification with consumer branded goods. With a mediocre education system, Islamists gain knowledge and membership from radical groups.

'Islam is the solution' is a regular placard slogan: the Caliphate is a standard part of Islamist discourse. The appeal of this is similar to those of the secular utopias of communism in the 1960s, whether Castro's Cuba or some Trotskyist alternative to the disappointing reality of 'actually existing socialism'.

The new Caliphate has the appeal of the communist utopia promised by the Russian Revolution of 1917. The paradise was postponed only by the hideous plots to destabilise it by the Western imperialists. So too the Caliphate was abolished after the Ottoman Empire collapsed and the Arab lands partitioned.

The Caliphate is posited as a mythological entity that would unite all Sunni Muslims once more and its rise is seen as the death knell for secularism, Godlessness and the Western imperialism that brought it all about. Fighting in Syria or within the belly of the beast are apiece with the same jihad.

The nihilism of those supposedly educated at British universities and going to fight in Syria has not seen them transform from naive idealists into brutalised psychopaths by the war alone. It was inherent within the ideology that posits the Caliphate as a realisable Utopia here on earth and that demands blood must be shed.

Resource War in Northern Iraq: Oil and the Anglo-American Military Intervention.

".. alongside the humanitarian crisis there is also a political and extremism crisis in Iraq that has a direct effect on us back here in the UK. We do have a fully worked through strategy for helping with allies to deal with this monstrous organisation – the Islamic State."-British Prime Minister David Cameron

The problem with Cameron's lame public diplomacy is that anyone who knows anything about the conflict in northern Iraq and Syria regards with complete contempt the cant about a 'monstrous organisation' and the impact it could have on our streets, a stock justification used for 'staying the course' in the Afghanistan.

It is about time British political leaders stopped treating the British public as some sort of infantile herd that can be fobbed off with condescending precision tooled up soundbites of the sort about  'military prowess', 'the terrorist organisation' and the possibility of 'mayhem in our streets'.

With the spread of the Internet and the 'information revolution', those even remotely interested in what is going on in northern Iraq could quickly discover that the reasons for intervention are not only concerned with saving the Yazidis from being killed by IS or about some more imminent terror threat being now a red alert.

The war in northern Iraq is not a simplistic conflict between forces of good versus evil, though IS is certainly evil and malign. It's a complicated many sided struggle over access to water as well as an ethnic/sectarian war between Kurds and Sunni Arabs over the oil wealth of Kirkuk amongst other things.

Unless the intention of the British involvement is to kill as many IS foot soldiers as possible and take out British born jihadists, then Cameron should refrain from trying to justify the war according to the idea it is primarily about protecting Britain from jihadists. It may actually increase that risk.

Cameron is, no doubt, aware that the cost of military intervention could be to lead to a spike in the threat of terrorism in Britain so he would need to manage risk and expectations by emphasising the ongoing nature of the threat the better to be able justify more intervention in future if attacked.

Britain would be better off tightening up borders and working with Turkey to prevent European jihadists crossing. Security measures are somewhat different to military campaigns to roll back what is, in reality, a potential threat to Iraq's stability and so global oil supplies and prices.

The crisis in Iraq has curtailed the supply of crude oil from OPEC's second largest producer and saw prices surge over $114 a barrel for the first time in nine months back in June 2014. Despite being less dependent on Middle East oil than in 2003, increased oil prices could affact the East Asian economies.

Energy analyst Anthony Cordesman argues "The United States, strategically, is a major trading power. It is particularly dependent on the import of manufactured goods from three countries which are extremely dependent on energy imports. Those happen to be China, South Korea, and Japan."

So while Sunni militants had been encroaching into Iraq months before the US and Britain decided to act, partly because of the Yazidis situation, but more due to the threat to Iraq as the world's 7th largest oil producer and the threat to Erbil and Kurdistan's oil boom regional state.

The Kurdish militias took Kirkuk in June 2014 and the threat to it from IS would set back British Petroleum's plans to reverse declining output at the oilfield discovered in 1927. Providing aid to the KRG could help remove opposition to BP's plans in Kirkuk, aswell as shoring yp the Iraqi government in Baghdad

Britain is among the many global players vying for oil contracts and the right to drill in Kurdish oil fields. The danger of that strategy is it could push Kurdistan further towards independence in a way that could anger Iran whose cooperation even Cameron has belatedly come to regard as essential to defeating IS.

Obama only gave the go-ahead for air strikes as soon as Erbil seemed in striking distance of the oil fields being drilled by Chevron and ExxonMobil. It is the involvement of such global oil majors that has put a strain on the relationship between Baghdad and Kurdistan that has helped destabilise Iraq.

Iraq is the cockpit of proxy struggles and resource wars and this vital fact in relation to both it and neighbouring Syria is routinely screened out from mainstream media accounts of the war when energy geopolitics should be getting a lot coverage and integrated into factual accounts of the conflict.

Blood, Oil and Barbarism in Syria and Iraq.

'Isis can only be defeated by Sunnis. To gain their support, the new Iraqi government needs to be inclusive, address the legitimate Sunni grievances and allow the recruitment of local Sunni forces as part of the Iraqi security forces.' Iraq’s new prime minister must get Sunnis on side if he wants to defeat Isis, Guardian Agust 16, 2014 .

The Sunni tribes have aligned with ISIS as part of a tactical move to improve their bargaining position with a Shi'ite dominated Baghdad. The problem is that ISIS is growing into a state within two states, the new Caliphate in northern Syria and Iraq, and it has become self financing through its control of oil.

Just as the Kurdish regions have grown more autonomous because of their oil wealth , ISIS has gained control over Syria's major oil fields such as al-Omar and al-Tanak. In July 2014, it was reported that ISIS was selling oil on the black market abroad to raise funds for more weapons and ammunition.

Even if the new Iraqi Prime Minister, Haidar al-Abadi, is able to prove a less divisive figure in Iraq's politics, no 'unitary government' has any guarantee of being able to do very much about ISIS having a base in northern Syria nor is it going to be able to destroy the emerging Caliphate overnight.

The danger is that the decision to arm the Kurdish peshmerga would lead some to advocate doing the same with the FSA in Syria because ministers such as Fabius in France have already started to put forward the idea that ISIS has been able to develop due to Assad paying for their illicit oil exports.

Iran would see that as a threat to its regional interests and view with hostility attempts to draw Kurdistan into a Turkish led strategy of economic development through the development of the Kirkuk-Ceylan pipeline, related infrastructure developments and calls for Kurdish oil exports to be officialised.

Support for Assad in Syria and Hizbollah in Lebanon would be stepped up to prevent the dominance of the FSA and the Muslim Brotherhood, even if Iran has an interest in checking ISIS in Iraq. But any attempt to deal with ISIS by knocking out Assad would only entrench regional proxy conflicts.

Should Iran respond by increasing military support for Shi'ite militias, then it is possible its main Gulf rival in Saudi Arabia would continue its contradictory and lethally dangerous policy of turning a blind eye to the finance given to ISIS by private donors as part of a strategy to divert internal discontent outwards.

So reducing the power of ISIS would mean a negotiated settlement in Syria based on including Iran at any future Geneva Conference and not making Assad's departure a precondition. It would also mean a crackdown on shady black market oil exports from Tuz Khurmatu into Turkey.

The outlook, more generally, is relentlessly grim. There is much evidence that the Sunni uprisings and ISIS are outgrowths not only of resource struggles over oil but also of access to water induced by global heating from the Middle East through to Central and Northern Africa where ISIS could spread.

The winter of 2014 saw one of the worst droughts in decades, with rain and show in the mountains of Eastern Turkey at half their usual level. Crop failure and desertification in Syria and Iraq are processes no unity government in Baghdad could reverse but they contribute in driving the desperate towards ISIS.

There is a real probability whole parts of the Middle East are heading towards complete decivilisation, chaos and bloodshed that could last for decades and intensify. If the West is not going to be dragged in, it needs to make finding alternatives to oil and gas a matter of emergency.