The price of disunity

Last June, the Iraqi Army was unable to defend Mosul from the onslaught of the self-ascribed Islamic State (IS). The Iraqi armed forces withdrew from the city in the wake of the IS attack and left it to the mercy of that merciless terrorist organization.
Later, the world saw the re-enactment of the same scenario in Ramadi, which is one of Iraq’s most strategic towns. The Iraqi forces fled the town, as it fell into the hands of the IS, prompting US chairman of the Joints Chief of Staff Gen. Dempsey to issue a statement saying, “The Iraqi forces chose to withdraw from the city; ISIS did not force them to do that...”
Had the Iraqi forces opted to counter the IS militants, it would have only aggravated the already complex situation. Anyway, that is a separate debate.
However, it provides important clues to the current situation in Iraq. To better understand it, let us look at how US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter interpreted the “withdrawal” in question: “What apparently happened was that the Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight.” He described the withdrawal as “very concerning” and went on to say, “We can give them training, we can give then equipment — we obviously can’t give them the will to fight.”
Although Carter appears to be assessing the current Iraqi situation, these words in fact underline US policy in the entire Middle East. The plan for the Middle East, which became much clearer with the first invasion of Iraq by Bush administration, on the pretext of nuclear weapons and has increasingly become a policy of setting Muslims against Muslims with the emergence of radical groups, is now working in practice.
Muslims are pointing their guns at other Muslims in Iraq, Syria, Yemen, Libya and other regions of the Middle East. The only part of the plan that is not working for the US secret state apparatus, is the partially unexpected involvement or emergence of the IS. That is why Carter blames the Iraqi forces. Although there is fighting among Muslims in a fragmented Middle East, just as planned, it is neither the West nor its supporters who are winning it.
The Middle East is also considered vital in Christian eschatology. It is, therefore, no surprise that western secret state apparatus should have plans for it. That is also no longer a secret.
However, it is unrealistic to apportion all the blame for the dreadful weakness into which the Middle East has fallen to the West alone. The Middle East is a region in which different races have lived together as Muslims down the years. These Muslims who should be in alliance are now literally competing to worsen the strife among them. They are using all possible means and pretexts to do so. The trigger does not always have to be western secret state apparatuses; it can also sometimes be oil, race or sectarianism. That is why the West manufactures arms, and that is why the Middle East is always arming itself.
For example, although Iran has signed an agreement enforcing restrictions on its nuclear program, it will escape restrictions on arming itself conventionally. This is part of a plan to boost the arms market in the near future and is being spoken of as significant good news for France, Europe, the US and Russia, which all dream of selling weapons and war planes to the region. According to figures for 2014, the US controlled 28 percent of the arms market share followed by Russia at 27 percent. Following the agreement, Russia is predicted to be able to sell $11-$13 billion worth of arms to Iran.
The rest of the Middle East is also an exciting market for the arms dealers in question. Sectarianism and racism are the main factors behind the expansion of that market. For example, the initiative by Iraq, which has lost the border with Syria and its main towns, to eliminate any space for Sunnis to live by bringing in Shiite militias, is being closely watched by the rest of the world. Some Kurds, who are keeping the Sunni Arabs at an arm’s length despite being Sunni themselves, are playing the race card instead. Shiites are refusing blood from Muslim Sunnis for their wounded co-religionists; Shiites refuse to pray behind Sunni imams, and Sunnis behind Shiite imams. We are falling for the stratagems of those who wish to make the region Arab, or Persian or Turkish, as if we were not all brothers in faith.
As a result, people are arming themselves so brothers can kill brothers, and Muslims can kill Muslims. This arms race has reached such ghastly dimensions that in 2014 the US broke all previous records by selling $8.4 billion worth of arms to the region.
While all this is happening, it is less than honest to try and wriggle out by saying, “The West is to blame.” So long as that happens, there will be no end, and no solutions, to the scourges in the Middle East. The Middle East’s Muslims should be capable of standing up and saying; “The blame lies with the spirit of opposition and division among Muslims, which makes life so much easier for those who shed our brothers’ life in our lands, who set Muslims against Muslims, who arm Muslims against one another when they should be rising up and growing stronger together, and who then say ‘You Muslims lack the will to kill one another’.” When Muslims are able to say this, when they realize that the great divisions into which they have fallen are something not desired by Allah, when they are able to see that the verse, “If you do not be friends and protectors of one another there will be turmoil in the land and great corruption” (Surat al-Anfal, 73) has come true, then the rage and bloodshed pervading the Middle East can be reined in.
Stratagems and slaughter will come to an end, and cunning plans will be thwarted. It should not be forgotten that the Middle East has become what it is, not at the command of arms empires or intelligence agencies, but because Muslims have been unable to unite. That error offends Allah. He regards it as very grave. The time has now come for Muslims to act on and spread these valuable words of our Prophet (peace be upon him), “Mercy lies in alliance, but disaster in division.”
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The writer has authored more than 300 books translated into 73 languages on politics, religion and science.
He tweets @harun_yahya